The Cigarette Holder
 
limp as a silk scarf
bent wrist, hollow hand, fingers
undone by narcotic calm
a damned woman lies
opium at her fingertips
graceful even in dying

faceless harlot
vain glorious with quellazaire
lipstick stains her ivory
needle nails display her
cruelty bone wrapped in jewels
ashes like cherry blossoms

Deborah Guzzi
​
This poem was written as part of the 20 Poem Challenge.

This poem was written for the 20 Poem Challenge.

Deborah Guzzi, author of The Hurricane, writes full time. The Hurricane is available at[email protected] and through Prolific Press. Her poetry appears regularly in journals & literary reviews in the UK, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Greece, Spain, France, India & dozens of others in the USA.  http://www.the-hurricanedg.com/

Bravo to all of you who made it through the 20 Poem Challenge. 
It's over now, and the world is hundreds of poems better for it. It is fascinating to see the diverse creations that the same work of art inspire in different people.
I love hearing that someone wrote things they never thought they'd write, or came up with a voice they didn't know they had. This is the beauty of contemplating art. It makes us think differently and experience new perspectives, ideas, and emotions.
We have been publishing some terrific poems from the challenge so far, but I know most of you haven't even sent them in yet. I look forward to reading your best once you've had time to go over them.
Ekphrastic has some future projects up its sleeves, as well as more writing on art and art on writing!
​-Lorette

I Understand Your Loneliness, 12x12", mixed media on canvas. Lorette C. Luzajic. 

Another butterfly piece inspired by John Fowles' The Collector, a terrible and beautiful novel about a deranged man who collects butterflies. His ultimate specimen is a woman he kidnaps and keeps trapped in a hidden room.

Click image to view on Etsy. Ekphrastic readers and writers receive 25% discount on all of Lorette's small artworks at Etsy. Just enter EKPHRASTIC25 as coupon code at checkout.

Your purchase helps support Ekphrastic, thank you.

La Lorette, 1869
     
Silk ribbons on a white chemise.
           Wild flowers, periwinkle blue,

Ah, she is new.  Quite lovely.
          in a spring meadow. I pick some,

Her corset, trimmed in lace, breasts and belly pale.
          for a vase on the mantle.  In an hour's time

I am sated, gather hat and gloves.
          the blossoms turn a dirty white and droop,

Blood on her petticoat.
          petals wilted.


Sarah Russell
​
This poem was written as part of the 20 Poem Challenge.

​Sarah Russell has returned to metaphor after a career teaching, writing and editing academic prose. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Kentucky Review, Misfit Magazine, Red River Review, Ekphrastic Magazine, and Black Poppy Review, among others.  More poems at www.SarahRussellPoetry.com.

A Nun Joins the Nouveau Order

                                              Belvedere Palace Tour, 1909


Klimt, Viennese thief of shiny armour, ripped the Bayeux Tapestry from its castle wall, hauled it to his bedroom floor, then plucked medieval Mary from her perch, unpinned her angel wings, drew her to his knightly lips. Klimt, alchemist, chef d’amour, melted down our golden mean for his own delight, scummed its dross, brushed her closed eyes, his open lips.


I should condemn this profane Eden, scorn Klimt’s carnal eye, but I can’t see how to do it. The artist covers his tracks too well. Both subjects are fully sheathed, their kiss—hardly worthy of the title—more temple peck than original sin.


And yet, in the couple’s mingling cloaks, a mystery play; in the murmuration of his chainmail and her chemise, holy communion. Mysterium fascinans. The temptation to join them, to become conjoined, overwhelms me—as it had once before—and I rush forward with the other worshippers, our flock angling, arrowing to pierce the picture plane.

Maureen Kingston


Maureen Kingston’s poems and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in Blue Earth Review, B O D Y, Gargoyle, Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal, Maudlin House, Misfitmagazine.net, Modern Poetry Quarterly Review, Red Paint Hill, So to Speak, Stoneboat, and Terrain.org. A few of her poems and prose pieces have also been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart awards.

Her New Face

Her cloak is water--
it falls away
blue-gold
to depths
dark as the space
between here and Pluto.
She rolls upward
creamy breasts
shimmering stomach
titian hair
to soft beams
bouncing off waves.
She wakes 
in a field 
as bright yellow
as mbuna fish
her new face
open to the sun.

Taunja Thomson
​
This poem was written for the 20 Poem Challenge.

Taunja Thomson: "My poetry has most recently appeared in Anti-Heroin Chic and will be featured in the September 2016 issue of Halcyon Days.  Two of my poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Award:  “Seahorse and Moon” in 2005 and “I Walked Out in January” in 2016.  I have co-authored a chapbook of ekphrastic poetry which has recently been accepted for publication and have a writer’s page at https://www.facebook.com/TaunjaThomsonWriter"

Deep Ink

Some things whitewash
will never cover
streaks made by bloody fingers
sliding down a wall
thick scars from clumsy stitches
closing up a wound
marks you wear forever
signatures of battles
fought under cover
of darkness-- of custom
or indifference
signs left for those
who know how to read
the hidden text
overwritten by a more
acceptable mythology
who know hard truth
like bones beneath the flesh
eventually outlasts                    
all disguises

Mary McCarthy
​
Mary McCarthy has always been a writer, but spent most of her working life as a Registered Nurse. Her work has appeared in many online and print journals, including Earth's Daughters, Gnarled Oak, Third Wednesday and Three Elements Review. She is grateful for the wonderful online communities of writers and poets sharing their work and passion for writing, providing a rich world of inspiration, appreciation, and delight.  

Milk & Honey
       
Milk

The only milk I know is the flock’s ewes’ from long ago & that the desert was a factor affecting the clotting properties after the teat. But even the desert can’t permeate the lamb’s ear. My own lambs, swarthy, not Egyptian, their ear lobes were this velvet clotting.

Honey

Bites raw, like the igneous of this sojourn. Bites amber, like the coral I gaped at hiking the ocean they called red. All the live fishes suffocated of a sudden—already flushed. Who could have known their breathlessness would turn them rose.  And the sea monsters I would never have known existed—they are honey now, too, compared even to the conquered Philistines.

Milk

My children’s children have children. I watch them bleed green stalks of a white substance. They’ll bleed more green when they descend to home those stalks. My granddaughters are women with babies at their breast. Some of them think I was a pharaoh.

Honey

I’ve grow horns like the lizards. I think it’s so I can joust with God with more than just my ribs when I cross over. I wake. Were the horns a dream? An infant screams and I tell his mother to bring him to me. Smashed to the tender sole, a bee.  I lean far as I dare over this precipice to see the flower whence it came.

Laura Page

​​This poem was written as part of the 20 Poem Challenge.

Laura Page is a graduate of Southern Oregon University where she studied English and Sociology. Her work has appeared in many literary publications, including Red Paint Hill, The Minola Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Kindred. Her chapbook, "Children, Apostates" is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press.

Untitled Poem


           all i know is

i fall into a work of mixed media
land on a swath of pink sound
my toes sticky with acrylic apples
spit-polished with rhythm and blues

teepees whisper loose words
in wispy velveteen balloons
curly-cues of razor wire protect
italic slant of mushrooms

a bird examines me   
finds me perpendicular     
to blue perfume of hidden thoughts
i sneeze the letter P

skis lose their edge in summer
pen cuddles ink
four-toed feet curl into fists
perch on chocolate stencil

brown betty gone
the bird gobbles her crumbs


Kathleen Stancik

This poem was written as part of the 20 Poem Challenge.

Kathleen Stancik discovered a love of poetry two and a half years ago during a series of classes led by local poets.  She’s been writing and learning ever since.  Her poems have been published in Manastash  and Poets Unite!, The LiTFUSE @10 Anthology.