Blue Facade Honeyed green tea sipped in the café still warms me explosion of people running blue for one man dying window shades and a mailbox Golden clouds hold a sampan’s shadow Rain, streaks on my eyes blue, lavender, turquoise trickles, deluges Sidewalk a path through sedge and bush Tall on the lawn Mother sits captive on the blue balcony Caught in the middle colours submerging me ocean reaches toward sky earth beckons Jackie Langetieg Jackie Langetieg has published poems in literary magazines: Verse Wisconsin, Blue Heron Review. She’s won awards, such as WWA’s Jade Ring contest, Bards Chair, and Wisconsin Academy Poem of the Year. She is a regular contributor to the Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar. She has written five books of poems, most recently, Letter to My Daughter, and a memoir, Filling the Cracks with Gold.
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Shiva, Cosmic Dancer O Shiva, Great creator and destroyer, you stand with arms unfurled Atop the puny demon of ego and ignorance O Shiva, With Mother Ganga flowing from your locks You bring forth the creation and destruction of universes galore The celestial sound of Om bellowing from your drum, The clash of worlds emanating from your steps, The knowledge of life, coiled like serpent around your neck, You dance the Cosmos into existence O Hindu Lord of Dance, encircled in flaming fire and heat, Your impassive face belies your eternal task Here and now; ceaseless and forever, Universal ecstasy pulsates through your writhing limbs The never-ending cycle of birth and death, planets and suns Stars and streams Meadows and trees All echo in your chest Sheenie Ambardar Sheenie Ambardar is a writer, artist, psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and activist. She loves art, Hindu philosophy, apricot maltipoos, and bright stickers. Her writing has been published in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, The Stanford Daily, The Getty Iris, and Zocalo Public Square. Sheenie lives and practices in Los Angeles, CA. In addition to next week's August 15th Sunday Session afternoon writing workshop, we have added a few dates.
Join us for our monthly Sunday afternoon writing drop ins. We did this series as an experiment for summer, and are extending sessions into the fall! September 12 session is now up. The workshops were phenomenal. We had an amazing time discussing art, writing together with some inspiring exercises, and sharing our work. We are adding occasional themed workshop sessions, including a moon themed program scheduled for September 19. We are also starting occasional Wine and Art Write Nights. For many years, Lorette wrote a column for Good Food Revolution pairing wine and art. Let's add some literature to the mix. We will meet and relax together online and get creative at the same time- kind of like paint night, but with poetry and flash fiction! Our first Wine and Art Write Night is on Wednesday, September 29 from 6 to 8 pm EST. We will add workshops as we are able to schedule them, so stay tuned. The new challenge prompt is up! Write a flash fiction story or a poem inspired by the artwork. Click on image above for details.
1. Julia Stankova’s Bart At first, we hardly notice him: that famous blind beggar from St. Marks But then there he is…in the top left corner of the frame, squatting half-naked as he flings off his cloak at the Healer’s approach . Yet strangely positioned … as if waiting to be troubled by both the crowd and Jesus; as if the painter was there just before the story began; just before his howl shatters the picture we see here But more strange than this are the eyes: the black dilated pupils of the crowd framed dead centre over which he and Jesus (from opposite ends of the painting) are about to see each other for the first time II. William Blake’s Bart Blake’s Bart too… flings aside his cloak and approaches the Healer almost naked And Jesus , clad in white, reaches out a horizontal arm to Bart with no attempt to touch; as if preparing for some magic to pass between them. III. Rihard Jakopič’s Bart Rihard Jokipic’s Bart is blind all over: Manacled in hands…and blinded with an eye as Marvell would say His body writhing out of his tunic as the healer approaches: wanting more than eyesight: wanting his whole body to see again. IV. Eric Gill’s Bart Eric Gill’s Jesus presses his thumbs down hard into Bart’s sockets, determined to push out the blindness… along with the blood and tears running down his cheeks Like clay on the wheel Bart buckles …and bends his head back under the fierce will of the Healer: Go — he says Your faith has made you well. V. Walt Whitman’s Civil War Bart Yawping like a mad-man from the roof-tops of Jericho, the voice cries out for a touch to break the orthodoxy of his inherited deformity: Blind loving wrestling touch, sheath’d hooded sharp-tooth’d touch!* - he howls And Christ’s voice brakes through softly; and in the terrible stillness, asks: What do you want me to do for you? But Bart’s eyes are still closed: his face is pale, he dares not look* What do you want me to do for you? repeats the Christ I want , said Bart, to see. Mark C. Watney *Song of Myself, 29. *The Wound Dresser, 3.1 Mark was born and raised in South Africa and immigrated to America in 1977 when a humble peanut-farmer was still president. He travelled and worked for a few years in Turkey, Japan, and India before returning to the States as a high school English teacher at Belmont High near downtown LA. Halfway through the journey of his life he earned his PhD at the University of Texas at Dallas and has been teaching at Sterling College in Kansas since 2006. At the age of 57 he began publishing stuff in literary journals for the first time and is now smitten with the poetry bug at age 60. Recent Publications: Acumen, Dappled Things (First place, Jacques Maritain Prize for Nonfiction), Saint Katherine Review, Front Porch Review, Presence, Cider Press Review, and others. I Want to Lay Down Inside an Agnes Martin Painting (Quotations from John Cage’s “Lecture On Nothing” (1959) "We need a structure, so we can see We are nowhere" Inside this fertile blankness [ ] a plump being grows {the space inside a wheel: how it turns } on a clear day at the gallery I gingerly dip a toe (In Milk River) touching, briefly an eclipse of all thought Approach, if you look close enough you can almost hear it hum. Thomas Mar Wee Thomas Mar Wee (they/them) is a writer, poet, and editor based in New York City. A recent graduate of Columbia University, they majored in Engish with a focus on electronic literature and generative poetics. Their short fiction was recently included in the anthology Meridian: The APWT Drunken Boat Anthology of New Writing. They are currently working on a short story collection and a novel. Tide Pool Touchable and out of reach the nautilus shell floats halfway between your conscious and your imagination in the speckled light. You are uncertain where the water ends and the air above begins. From the right, light breaks in revealing nebulous shapes embedded within the watery mass. The light becoming shards swimming in turquoise, blues, and greens, a imprecise emptiness of white, and a hint of buried yellow. Reflections diffuse into ripply segments and the eye struggles to discover what is offered and yet buried. Perhaps a jellyfish. Perhaps an illusion. Perhaps the key you are seeking. And all the while the sun is lowering itself into the waves. James Thomas Fletcher James Thomas Fletcher has written short stories, plays, and screenplays, but favors poetry. He is married to the artist Cynthia Fletcher and, until recently, lived on the side of a volcano in the Republic of Panamá. His latest major poetry collection is Roses for the Canyon (2019). http://www.jamesthomasfletcher.com Disco Nefertiti You asked about Marie and I didn’t know what to tell you. I’d last seen her wedged atop my bookshelves, her sly smile up there blank and all knowing, and it hadn’t dawned on me until that moment that I hadn’t seen her for some time. Marie, the long-necked Madonna of disco. I would have guessed her sultry vintage stare was painted on just as Abba hit their stride, but she was as aloof and flawless as Nefertiti, another incarnation. Nah, you said when you gifted her to me- she’s a real redhead, like me. I had to agree and ended up spray painting her russet when she got dusty. I heaped her in swathes of little disco balls that bloomed pink and baby blue when the last light fell through the blinds. Her neck grew as long as our friendship. Once you strapped Marie to the front of your boyfriend’s Bronco, and she rode unblinking through Wyoming and Michigan to land back home. When you left again you placed her at the topmost shelf in my library and she’d never gone anywhere since. How long had it been since Marie’s discreet disappearance and now? I had no idea where she’d gone or who had taken her. Sometimes it’s like that, a small mystery, like how the day I met you, you were long and thin and orange like the cat I loved who had fallen fatally from the balcony that very morning. I named you after him, a moniker you wore from then on forward. We never agreed on anything but “Suzanne” by Leonard Cohen, thrift store oddities, and New Orleans. It didn’t matter, nothing did, in that kind of friendship, easy as Sunday morning. Lorette C. Luzajic This was first published by Flash Fiction North, and is from the author's latest ekphrastic collection, Winter in June. Read a review of the book at Miramichi Reader (review by Bill Arnott) here. Lorette C. Luzajic studied for a degree in journalism from Ryerson University, but went on to more creative pursuits. Her ekphrastic flash fiction and prose poetry have been widely published, including recent (or forthcoming appearances) in Trampset, The Citron Review, Ghost Parachute, Unbroken Journal, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Cleaver Magazine, and Flash Boulevard. She has been nominated several times each for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Lorette is also an internationally collected visual artist, with art in at least thirty countries. She teaches mixed media art making to clients at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. She recently started doing ekphrastic writing workshops online, and is teaching a five-day ekphrastic workshop with Meg Pokrass this summer. In 2015, she merged her passions and founded The Ekphrastic Review. Star Swallowed Her white dress was the only detail that stayed consistent in the retellings, how it shone in the dazzle that poured down. Most said her dog Cricket was taken up with her, though others claimed he still frisked the edges of their fields, pissing off barn cats. Either way it was agreed he was an inky, yippy little thing, one they preferred out of sight. Come to think of it, they preferred her out of sight too; she’d been a hazy child, more curtain of water than girl. Her brothers wouldn’t speak for seven months after, and they weren’t boys of many words to begin with. “She was swallowed,” one had confided, “by stars.” Truth was, they’d both been bowled clean over by the dazzle, witnesses only to the insides of their eyelids. It was said the cows minded their business while she was taken up. The horses, of course, watched the whole thing. They saw her bathed in moonbeam certainty, head upturned, swimming with clean strokes to a place beyond all light. Olivia Wolford Olivia Wolford was born on a hot summer day in Dallas County, Texas. She is an environmental anthropologist, teacher, and writer currently living in the D.C metro area. |
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