Facing the Wind
 
Golden manes twist, intertwine
with dust clouds, marking matched pace.
The herd is alive with motion,
magically merging into one
bestial embodiment of flight.  Without feathers
they cut the sky, diamonds against glass.
Desert distances never stood a chance.
To capture or confine for any designation
longer than flash of moment’s frame
would be a profanity of nature.
Four hooves times four corners
is not translatable.  The language
of freedom is all they know.

A.J. Huffman

A.J. Huffman has published eleven solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses.  Her new poetry collections, Another Blood Jet (Eldritch Press), A Few Bullets Short of Home (mgv2>publishing), Butchery of the Innocent (Scars Publications) and Degeneration (Pink Girl Ink) are now available from their respective publishers and amazon.com.  She has an additional poetry collection forthcoming:  A Bizarre Burning of Bees (Transcendent Zero Press).  She is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a two-time Best of Net nominee, and has published over 2300 poems in various national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, and Kritya.  She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press.  www.kindofahurricanepress.com.

Venus de Milo – A Farewell to Arms
             with apologies to Ernest Hemingway

Goddess of love and beauty,
saucy wench –
flaunting her perky breasts,
cloth drapery sliding
down her thighs
exposing
posterior cleavage
befitting a plumber.

She tilts to her right
unable to maintain balance,
still stumbling in a state of stupor
following an ambrosia
bender
culminating in the loss
of her cherished
plinth

and both marble arms.
She is now but
a spectacle
for Louvre tourists
who gawk and point
at the vestiges
of her night
of debauchery.
           
Fern G. Z. Carr

Previously published in  Ekphrastia Gone Wild, edited by Rick Lupert.

FERN G. Z. CARR is a Director of Project Literacy, lawyer, teacher and past President of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. She is a Full Member of and former Poet-in-Residence for the League of Canadian Poets.  Carr composes and translates poetry in five languages while currently learning Mandarin Chinese.  A 2013 Pushcart Prize nominee, she has been published extensively world-wide from Finland to Mauritius. In addition to multiple prizes and awards, honours include being cited as a contributor to the Prakalpana Literary Movement in India; her poetry having been taught at West Virginia University and set to music by a Juno-nominated musician; an online feature in The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper; and her poem, “I Am”, chosen by the Parliamentary Poet Laureate as Poem of the Month for Canada.  Carr is thrilled to have one of her poems presently orbiting the planet Mars aboard NASA’S MAVEN spacecraft. www.ferngzcarr.com.

Cigarette Shoe

Femme fatale,
saucy coquette
she bares her sole –

the rubber tip of her stiletto heel
slightly jagged
like the smouldering ash
at the tip of a cigarette

and the spiral bands
of her toe box
twirling
in ever-diminishing
curls of smoke –

fiery rivals for the
affections of the circular
ankle choker
that is her ashtray.

Cigarette Shoe is sinful
and seductive
flaunting her wares and
strutting her stuff
in the seedy twilight haunts
of grey, black and white pastel.

Fern G. Z. Carr

FERN G. Z. CARR is a Director of Project Literacy, lawyer, teacher and past President of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. She is a Full Member of and former Poet-in-Residence for the League of Canadian Poets.  Carr composes and translates poetry in five languages while currently learning Mandarin Chinese.  A 2013 Pushcart Prize nominee, she has been published extensively world-wide from Finland to Mauritius. In addition to multiple prizes and awards, honours include being cited as a contributor to the Prakalpana Literary Movement in India; her poetry having been taught at West Virginia University and set to music by a Juno-nominated musician; an online feature in The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper; and her poem, “I Am”, chosen by the Parliamentary Poet Laureate as Poem of the Month for Canada.  Carr is thrilled to have one of her poems presently orbiting the planet Mars aboard NASA’S MAVEN spacecraft. www.ferngzcarr.com.

The Gleaners

Three peasant women –
babushka-like kerchiefs,
coarse homespun garb,
the hems of their skirts
skirting
the stubble
of harvested fields.

Millet’s rustic canvas,
Des glaneuses –
an autumnal
coming-to-fruition
of the harvest cycle
in nineteenth century
agrarian France;
the gleaning
after reaping –  

dregs collected by
marginalized women
who stoop and gather,
stoop and gather,
gather and stoop
meagre sheaves and stalks;

marginalized women
who strive for sustenance
with humble dignity.

Fern G. Z. Carr

FERN G. Z. CARR is a Director of Project Literacy, lawyer, teacher and past President of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. She is a Full Member of and former Poet-in-Residence for the League of Canadian Poets.  Carr composes and translates poetry in five languages while currently learning Mandarin Chinese.  A 2013 Pushcart Prize nominee, she has been published extensively world-wide from Finland to Mauritius. In addition to multiple prizes and awards, honours include being cited as a contributor to the Prakalpana Literary Movement in India; her poetry having been taught at West Virginia University and set to music by a Juno-nominated musician; an online feature in The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper; and her poem, “I Am”, chosen by the Parliamentary Poet Laureate as Poem of the Month for Canada.  Carr is thrilled to have one of her poems presently orbiting the planet Mars aboard NASA’S MAVEN spacecraft. www.ferngzcarr.com.

Reflections on Kwele and Sefulo Masks, and West African Sculptures at the Gallery Downtown
    
    There is a room at the Art Gallery of Ontario with a few dozen sculptures from Cameroon and Niger. The air is heavy with spirits. Many years ago, I had the privilege of exploring an anthropology museum at the University of British Columbia. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of masks and carvings from native North and South America, Africa, Haiti, the Caribbean, Oceania, and beyond. Whether spirits are real or a figment of human imagination, all museums are haunted, and this one was teeming with ghosts.
    Today I sit for an hour or so with the ghosts of Chad, raconteurs of another world  far away.
    African primitive art was a key driver of modern art, when painters and sculptors in Europe began to explore art history outside of the western traditions. They pared away what they saw as excesses and sought the soul of creativity. Perhaps their insinuations that Africans were less civilized and thus closer to the gods was patronizing, but their admiration was genuine. Matisse, Picasso, Modigliani and their peers keenly adopted some stylistic cues from tribal artisans, from startling simplicity to linear elegance to fearless amalgamations of colour.
    Today it is impolitic to discuss a culture as primitive or weigh in on their superstitions, but every time I enter this sacred space, I hear the deep thunder of ritual drums. I feel icy fingers of fear at the base of my spine, even as the blistering humidity of the jungle engulfs me. Art is stronger than the changing whims of fashionable correctness, and the emotions these extraordinary works were created with are powerful magic.
    It is easy to see why early missionaries to Africa and Polynesia were frightened, why they felt surrounded by evil spirits. The ones who haughtily dismiss such fears as racist, from the comfort of their well-lit, modern lives, are the ones who got it wrong. They might not believe in spirits, but the artists certainly did. Their creations were ritual in nature, meant to conjure and to dispel. Some rites were to banish and protect from evil, and others were to summon it. In the darkest times, such ceremonies extended to cannibalism and human sacrifice, as with the Druids and the Aztecs. Fear is an honest, visceral response to the art, and it is abject pretension for these contemptuous critics to think they would have responded otherwise.
    They are disconcerting indeed, these crude slashes and flapping vulvas, the toothy screams, the nightmare faces and strangely hunched physicality. The angry, angular breasts, the monstrous penises. There are millennia of spirits in these frozen wooden statues. As eerily still as they are, they are alive, portals to a vivid world beyond our knowledge.
    I love ritual African art for precisely these reasons. European traditions in art are glorious, but there are other ways of looking at the world. The theatre of primeval ritual art remembers and preserves the profound wonder and fear at the deepest level of being human. There is an elemental quality, a timelessness, that transports us to brazen intimacy with the unknown world. At times rude, crude, and ugly, such art does not turn away from the profound fears we harbour. At other times, it is impossibly elegant, paying sophisticated tribute to gifts the rest of us take for granted, gifts like motherhood or rain.
    Here in this room, we step away from the traffic and the noise and the sky high rises just metres away outside, and we find ourselves face to face with mystery. Us against the gods. We feel the beginning and the ending of time, and the eternity in between, come full circle.  

Lorette C. Luzajic
 

 

Welcome to Ekphrastic's first Twenty Poem Challenge!

Join us in November, five days a week, to see how a variety of artworks ignite your imagination. Click on the 20 Poem Challenge button in the top right to sign up, or just work clandestine at home.

We considered doing a year, a poem a day, a 100 poems, and all sorts of variation, and decided on a month-long commitment that can be renewed or selected one-time or a few times per year.

We hope you discover new ways of looking at art and thinking about art, and find creative expressions and subjects and words you might not have used outside of this art-prompted challenge. 

We are excited to share some wonderful art with you, and hope you find works that resonate with you and intrigue you; familiar works; strange works; and works that you have more difficulty connecting with. Considering art of all kinds can take our ideas and writing in so many directions. 

The artwork can serve as a springboard or it can be deeply integral to your poem. Spend some time looking at the painting, and then see where your imagination takes you. You can research the artwork or artist, or you can work solely with what is in front of you.

The rules are easy- you commit to writing twenty poems in response to the twenty prompts that will be posted under the headline "20 Poem Challenge." The artworks will be posted every weekday morning.

You can spend as much or as little time as you wish on the project. You can also write prose or fiction or any other inspiration that comes to you.

We hope you will find a few gems in your experiment. Polish your favourite works and submit them to Ekphrastic! The best pieces will be published.

Invite your friends to play.

Your humble editor will be doing the 20 Poem Challenge this month (and others) as well.

Can't wait to see what you write!

Lorette

Jvlivs Maximvs Was Here

Majestic Roman aqueduct at Pont du Gard
spanning fifty kilometers from Uzès to Nîmes

rising forty-eight meters above the Gardon;
architecture overwhelming in strength and beauty –

noble arches supporting its solid rock structure
with the grace and symmetry of fine lace.

Strolling along the promenades,
I daydreamed about the lives of the laborers

toiling under the hot sun to erect this masterpiece
dragging immense boulders with Herculean effort

positioning them with mathematical precision
to form a walkway boasting panoramic landscapes,

a walkway boasting the name Jvlivs
etched in one of the stones –

a trace of ancient graffiti or an attempt
to achieve immortality in the year 50 A.D.

Fern G. Z. Carr

FERN G. Z. CARR is a Director of Project Literacy, lawyer, teacher and past President of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. She is a Full Member of and former Poet-in-Residence for the League of Canadian Poets.  Carr composes and translates poetry in five languages while currently learning Mandarin Chinese.  A 2013 Pushcart Prize nominee, she has been published extensively world-wide from Finland to Mauritius. In addition to multiple prizes and awards, honours include being cited as a contributor to the Prakalpana Literary Movement in India; her poetry having been taught at West Virginia University and set to music by a Juno-nominated musician; an online feature in The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper; and her poem, “I Am”, chosen by the Parliamentary Poet Laureate as Poem of the Month for Canada.  Carr is thrilled to have one of her poems presently orbiting the planet Mars aboard NASA’S MAVEN spacecraft. www.ferngzcarr.com.

A Ready-Made Poem
I don’t believe in art. I believe in artists. – Marcel Duchamp

I call my dog and can’t hear my own voice
ponder the question redundant
marvelous inexplicable Beethoven
who heard the music as loudly as I blast
Phish in my ears, it occurs to me--

the risk necessary to compose genius:
listen to nothing and assemble everything.
There is no original language,
only divine voices worth studying
searching for recognition making

me laugh at the page exploding Whitman’s
barbaric yawp and Ginsberg’s Howl descending
Saul’s galactic journey in the spot
        where truth  echoes seeking
               feminism beyond Jong searing
          song lyrics dividing skies melting
the yellow brick road into Pink Floyd’s dark
side of the moon Flaming Lips purse as the flea
flits from John Donne’s metaphysical mind
for whom the bell tolls Hemingway haunts
the same streets in Key West I linger kissing

metaphors stumbling over my own Dadaist
tendencies embracing my absurd understanding
of reality blurring my vision haphazard compositions
plot curves knighted by Marcel Duchamp secreting
doors while all the while pretending earnest defiance,
makes me love him even more.

B. Elizabeth Beck

This poem is from B. Elizabeth Beck's manuscript, Painted Daydreams. The writer, artist and teacher is the author of two poetry books, and founder of central Kentucky's Teen Howl Poetry Series. She lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

Street Peddler
you say it’s a living, we’ve all gotta eat  –Robert Hunter

he scrawls abstract
portraits of Hemingway
reminiscent of Picasso
as we talk about Bukowski,  
I gaze at his sidewalk exhibit,
watercolour landscapes one side,
portraits on the other –

each cubist rendition unique
enough to catch my attention
a moment more, lingering long
enough for him to grace me
with a poem of his own about
a girl from Sweden who left lipstick
smudges behind in Key West
where he drinks vodka in her
memory, writing poetry in her wake

B. Elizabeth Beck

This poem is from B. Elizabeth Beck's manuscript, Painted Daydreams. The writer, artist and teacher is the author of two poetry books, and founder of central Kentucky's Teen Howl Poetry Series. She lives in Lexington, Kentucky.