Question Gamine, head down, she looks up and out, body subdued, it seems, shoulders hunched, hands together in her lap. She sits beside a well in the painting I bought, and she looks out, but she doesn’t stare at me. Instead, she half-smiles at a man, who wears on his back a worn leather knapsack, and tied on top, a folded easel, canvas umbrella, the tools he needs to paint. I can’t see his face; it’s hidden from all but her as he leans slightly forward. In his hand, a canvas, blank, I imagine; ready stamped on the back with the supplier’s name. I spend hours staring at the scene and wondering about the hand that made this fine painting. Unfinished, the experts think, and so unsigned: Not worth much. But this painter had a touch: brushed feathers of light fall across the shaded well; a mass of greens imply a mossy stone trough where livestock drink. Woman at the well. Does the painter, like Jesus, offer the living water, life eternal? Does my painting make that claim for art instead of faith? A radical thought back then. The painting tells me she belongs to this place, but he’s a stranger, a student of plein air: a hint of formality in their conversation. She is listening; he leans forward. I see now. The once-blank canvas, faceless painter: He’s given us the moment that he asked, May I paint you? This painting, then, her answer. Sandy Solomon Sandy Solomon’s book, Pears, Lake, Sun, received the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press, published simultaneously in the UK by Peterloo Poets. Her work has appeared in a number of publications, including The New Yorker, Vox Populi, New Republic, The Times Literary Supplement, Poetry Review, Partisan Review, Threepenny Review, The Gettysburg Review, Harvard Magazine, and others. Her poems have appeared in a number of anthologies including Women’s Work, Orpheus and Company: Contemporary Poems on Greek Mythology, and A Breathless Hush, The MCC Anthology of Cricket Verse. Several of her essays on poetry have appeared in Mentor and Muse. She is Writer in Residence and Associate Director of the Creative Writing Program at Vanderbilt University. She lives in Nashville and, several months of the year, in London.
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Buddha in the Mandorla Centre of all centres, core of cores, almond self-enclosed and ever-sweetening-- all of this, from here to all the stars, is your fruit’s flesh: we bid you greeting. Look, you feel how nothing any longer clings to you; your shell is infinite, and the strong juice extends there, pressing it. A radiance from outside makes it stronger, for up above, ablaze and full, your suns have turned around to face you. Yet in you already something that endures beyond them has begun. Susan McLean (translation) Buddha in der Glorie Mitte aller Mitten, Kern der Kerne, Mandel, die sich einschließt und versüßt, - dieses Alles bis an alle Sterne ist dein Fruchtfleisch: Sei gegrüßt. Sieh, du fühlst, wie nichts mehr an dir hängt; im Unendlichen ist deine Schale, und dort steht der starke Saft und drängt. Und von außen hilft ihm ein Gestrahle, denn ganz oben werden deine Sonnen voll und glühend umgedreht. Doch in dir ist schon begonnen, was die Sonnen übersteht. Rainer Maria Rilke (1908) Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) was one of the leading modernist poets in German. He was born in Prague, but traveled all over Europe. He served for a while as Rodin's secretary and was deeply interested in the visual arts. Susan McLean is a retired professor of English from Southwest Minnesota State University. She has published two books of her own poetry and a book of translations of Martial's Latin epigrams. She also translates poetry from French and German. Framing Sarah Malcolm Halfway along the gallery you hang quietly in shades of grey and yellow avoiding my gaze, face implacable. Irish laundress – infamous murderess. Flanked by kings, courtiers and classical nymphs, your place assured by Master Hogarth's craft. Who, two days before your execution, called to capture you with oils and canvas. Each brush stroke holds you in static panic, knowing that as the paint embodies you, your life unwinds towards its final frame. A cart, a crowd, a rope, a drop, one breath before you plunge to trade your mortal pain for this work of art – this still life. Jane Baston from the National Gallery of Edinburgh: "Sarah Malcolm was executed in 1733 at the age of 25 for the murder of her mistress Lydia Duncomb and two fellow servants. Malcolm denied having any part in the killing but was found guilty and sentenced to hang. Hogarth sketched her in Newgate Prison in London two days before her execution on 7 March at Fleet Street. Hogarth then went on to make this painting and an engraving, that was popular due to her notoriety. This picture is said to have been bought from the artist by Horace Walpole and was in the Walpole sale at Strawberry Hill on 14 May 1842." Jane Baston is originally from Oxfordshire. She lived and worked in Lebanon and the USA for a number of years. She has now settled in Scotland where she spends time writing, walking and dancing. Her poetry and reviews have appeared in numerous places including Stand, Mslexia, Rain Taxi and Lunar Poetry. She has also published essays in Studies in English Literature, Prose Studies and Film and Literature Quarterly.
Guest Editor’s Note: Thank-you to all of the writers who entered the DALE PATTERSON CHALLENGE; I was impressed by the quality, quantity and variety of the interpretations to Dale’s masterwork. An over-arching apocalyptic theme emerged as I read through the responses. It seems flying fish and quaking buildings inspire contemplation of doomsday scenarios. I hope all entrants continue to participate in future challenges, keeping this unique publication vibrant. I know I will. Jordan Trethewey ** It Happened Almost Overnight We all saw it coming, but did nothing much, hid in our houses. Already there is no internet, no TV, no smartphones, no video games. The sky itself aflame with an eerie light, not the metallic grey-green from before the storm, not the hot-red sky celebrating forests fires or New York in flames. But a poison yellow never before seen. A yellow that curdles the blood. A yellow that passes through the empty windows of the skeletal fronts of houses that once rang with the laughter of children, the barking of dogs, the scolding of parents. The waters blackened by oil and soot, not quite boiling. There isn’t much time for evolution, The birds fall out of the sky. The fish grow wings. Rose Mary Boehm A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of Tangents, a full-length poetry collection published in the UK in 2010/2011, her work has been widely published in US poetry journals (online and print). She was three times winner of the now defunct Goodreads monthly competition. There were other prizes. Recent poetry collections: From the Ruhr to Somewhere Near Dresden 1939-1949: A Child’s Journey and Peru Blues or Lady Gaga Won’t Be Back. Her latest full-length poetry MS, The Rain Girl, has been accepted for publication in June 2020 by Blue Nib. ** Poem, as Abstract Aphorisms for Yahia Lababidi and Carl Terver our milk gets infested with ants we spill more than we rein it is like a wave – arrives quickly as it leaves – moments curdle powdered sky on tuscan terrain ghosts stalk angular tips of roofs the mountains have risen from salt pink as sea-rock windows are washed in medallion gold; birds have fled concrete sills houses swirl in kinetic pools when the ocean lost its gravity inside the safe harbour of our minds winds clang nervously as clumsy bells our milk has spilled – ants canvas territory the tar on roads sweat their foreheads heat has melted in its pot of indifference our skins are red bricks of graffiti dissipating as aerated cans of paints summers have caramelised fish wings in thick waters the sight of blue is a site of grey forage: ships hunt as water escapes Sheikha A. Sheikha A. is from Pakistan and United Arab Emirates. Her works appear in a variety of literary venues, both print and online, including several anthologies by different presses. Her poetry has been translated into Spanish, Greek, Arabic and Persian. More about her can be found at sheikha82.wordpress.com ** Turquoise Dorsal Fins The storm’s itself a beard— red herring, if you will— for wild shenanigans that take place in its murk and turn the normal order fairytale and topsy-turvy under cover of the squall. Put on these spectacles, and see beyond the gale— town houses snug as peas in pods as flying fish put the uakari screeching gulls and Christian power poles to flight in flaxen glare. Or don’t. How partnerships of odd men out are balanced, sins become resolved or sausages amassed is not for queasy stomachs, lily livers and faint hearts. Let blue skies reappear. Tom Riordan Tom Riordan continues living and writing -- in Hoboken, New Jersey now. If you see him swimming in the river, don't call the police, he isn't drowning. ** Eager to Stay Airborne We, the scaled birds of the oceans, are eager to stay airborne. The tumult below might drown every gilled one of us. Poseidon just heard some Mediterrean sailors praying to some god called Neptune for smooth seas to sail. The wood from these houses will soon become rafts for those who denounce Jupiter & driftwood for the coffins of those who choose Pluto. The blue of our right wing-fins passports us to both sea & sky. We believe we float forever on the horizon when we die. Mike Casetta Mike Casetta has many poems published in many small presses. ** Nature’s Plan As flying fish fall from the sea to the sky in a capsizing world where the oceans apply all the anger of currents which swirl into storms, winding faster and faster, their violence forms a great onslaught of tides, wind, and rain in their race to remove mankind’s blight from the land, from Earth’s face, and restore to its atmosphere air which is cleansed as volcanic upheavals and lightning amends with their hot, smelting furnace of natural power pollutants which plague every forest and bower, each crevice on Earth, on the land, beneath oceans, the aggregate muck of insidious motions which feed our fierce need to consume all we can as man, in his wisdom, exterminates man. Ken Gosse Ken Gosse prefers writing light verse with traditional meter and rhyme. First published in The First Literary Review–East in 2016, also in The Offbeat, Pure Slush, Parody, The Ekphrastic Review, and others. Raised near Chicago, now retired, he and his wife have lived in Mesa, AZ, over twenty years. ** Love in the Land of Flying Fish Summertime, and the livin' ain't easy, fish are jumpin' high as the sky -- 1. Like birds of a feather fish fly together their wings held steady in the yellow sky. Beyond the ocean's tarmac waves the island has survived in a painting with 28 cap-shaped roof tops and 28 roof top trap doors all leading upward to the sky; and 28 cut-glass cisterns called practical chalices (a fictional alias) filled with rain gathered from a storm before the sun flames at sunset and you begin to make Cou Cou the island's favorite dish -- Authentic Barbados Flying Fish. So many of our friends have said "the fairy tale is over" I'm afraid to tell you I'm tired of being Princess Rustika my room beneath the tower unfinished bare beams and all the paint used up for the roofs; with your message I care Rusty, I care about us! And I'm ashamed to say I answered The way Daedalus cared about Icarus? But I was tired, and the towers were too narrow for over-indulgence -- second helpings of flying fish -- and the floors were too narrow to dance and the beds were too narrow for -- well, you can guess; and the fish in the legend were coming home to sleep (some had jumped into boats to sleep in the bay, lullabye-rocking in the tarmac waves); with fish on my mind I decided to sleep outside -- what they say, in Barbados "flying fish" means fish sleeping on land outside of the sea -- outside where my hands could reach up for their wings (like birds of a feather the fish fly together!) when stars are rising in random locomotion to put forgotten dreams in motion, leaving their sparkle for fish scales -- 2. & I asked you to hold the narrow ladder steady in a narrow tower with a purple trap door if you please hand me fish nets hand-made in Barbados where this fairy tale is written though I've never been there to dream about fish wings like flying mirrors reflecting my future in the shape of a sail -- when wings fill a fishnet my heart holds on -- carried by love beyond the storm. Laurie Newendorp Laurie Newendorp lives and writes in Houston, Texas. Her poem won second place in the Houston Poetry Fest, Ekphrastic Poetry Contest, 2018, and her work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Nimrod (runner up for the Pablo Neruda Prize), AIPF, Isotope and Dogwood. A graduate of the University of Houston Creative Writing Department in Poetry, she enjoys reading at Archway Gallery and at various museums and art installations with Art & Words. Recently, she is pleased to have discovered the Ekphrastic Challenge (her first online publication) as poetry, art, archaeology, travel, dogs, horses (actually all animals) and family are her passions. She fished with her grandfather as a child but has never captured a flying fish. ** Fish Out of Water The birds swooped and dived, “listen carefully to us”, they sang to the fish. “We lived in water. Then we wanted to change so we came out of the water, left it below. Then we swopped scales for feathers, exchanged fins for wings. We soared on the thermals and perched in the trees so come fly with us now it’s your turn to leave.” The fish listened carefully they were intrigued. “How do we fly?”, they mouthed in response. “Come up and join us, we’ll teach you to fly”. “If you fall from the sky we’ll teach you to swim” the fish called up to them. But the birds didn’t hear until they joined in. Lynn White Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Capsule Stories, Light Journal and So It Goes. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/ ** Warm Snow Stormy opinions run down the flagpoles of our TV aerials And cause our roofs to rattle as they discharge within and without us. Bold views colour our imagination and our selves, making us clash or complement with our neighbours. We reward our tribe with glowing stickers and like moths, we circle this artificial light. And then as quiet as the dew new ideas condense, coalesce and crystallise. Still chaotic and pastel they cast little shade, and we, blinded by comfort and compromise fail to see them. But there is hope. First our eyes need to be convinced that their vision is incorrect. Then bravery or foolishness both act as lubricants to necks made stiff through inaction. Next our legs propel us to the door And finally our arms stretch outside, and instead of hawk or dove, what settles on our wrist Is a fish. Graham Hartland Graham is a science teacher who enjoys writing and wordplay. He occasionally wakes up early when inspired to write, and has yet to win any prizes or competitions. ** The Dreams of Fishes The fishes leave the wide salty seas Follow tributaries Leading through estuaries Of swamped land and marsh-- Crisscross entanglements of Riparian buffer strips Nibbled by run-off and wind And time and space. No longer knitting together The underpinnings Mother Earth Edged her shores with. Earth—its people swimming in a work-a-day World, hands glued to wheels Or bits of silicone from valleys far off. Night and daydreams lost on greed, lust. Nothing in the name of Love moves them. The fishes draped in sky-startling blues Seek this new land where air becomes water And the aerial ocean, the bubbled haven Encapsulating this blue marble at its core, To their delight, fills with water. And the gleeful fishes swim among the glassy-eyed peoples In this newly deepening blue sea Past houses-- The flags unfurled—and yes, The flickering lights-- Extinguished One By One. Taylor Collins Taylor Collins writes and paints in Dover Delaware. She writes almost daily in fragmented forms usually taking the form of poetry. She has been published in two anthologies for prose. She makes small chapbooks and larger collages incorporating her poetic work. Taylor has participated in many poetry readings. She is past National President of National League of American Pen Women, is a member of the Mayor’s Art Council in Dover, and assorted arts advocacy related groups and paints and writes daily in her art gallery in the historic district. ** The Audacity of Storms I look at the sky and wonder how I can stick my feelings in it. the storm clips a nerve, but I don’t hear any thunder; my ear, a shell on the sand, fills with echoes, an inaudible scream shattering to a million answering lights. the tumult in the sea below begins to rise causing a ripple of extinction; a fury cast and unwound from the mouth blowing every living thing out of the water; rooftops dance to the cacophony of gulls, skyfulls of fish spawn new fairgrounds-- the chaos mirrors the litter I’ve made of my life; so many canvases washed in yellow defeat, the mauve-coloured glasses and failed affairs thrown at the wind’s salt feet. tarnished crowns of disappointment hurl from the clouds, I’ve worshipped all the wrong gods. my spine, like the easel sloped on the beach, sinks to the weight of dreaming, to disbelief, to grieving— I don’t need hope or flesh or sea-wind; possibility alone paints the torment in my heart, this unrequited muted tone of tuna, crushed in a tin of nacreous oil; an emulsion of longing darker ever than storms or skies. Jennifer Jenkins Jennifer Jenkins is a Canadian writer from Victoria BC, who lives and works in Central Ontario. Her poetry has been showcased in several publications such as the I-70 Review and The Blue Island Review in Kansas, USA, with a recently published book of poetry and prose. ** Sea Change Never expected the flying fish to take to the sky. So many centuries of evolution – building fin strength, growing auxiliary lungs. Have they adapted to escape the oil spills, the tons of plastic choking the sea? Or did they follow the example of those first whales who strode on four legs into the waves to stay? Across miles and years, the sea calls me back. I chose the right day to return. Some of us just know we’re living in the wrong time, place, or body. Alarie Tennille Alarie Tennille graduated from the University of Virginia in the first class admitting women. She’s now lived more than half her life in Kansas City, where she serves on the Emeritus Board of The Writers Place. Her latest poetry book, Waking on the Moon, contains many poems first published by The Ekphrastic Review. Please visit her at alariepoet.com. ** Jams on the Freeway Second Sunday August chaos without parallel beach houses on the freeway jammed gable to gable, tight with headlamps on full beam going nowhere fast expletives in profusion loud and offensive not what realtors promised though when do they deliver just swarm round the periphery avoiding the obvious oblivious to the discord but intent on more bucks while covering their butts in stretch lycra and cotton chinos while a proxigean tide gallops the coast like headless horsemen in this age of global warming water levels rising as yeast talked about ad nauseum by the incompetent, the impotent with God’s children crying, loud for action in our time as a murmuration of Beach Boys harmonise overhead carrying saffron flavoured rock candy once available at the 7-11 now liquefied to a ranch dressing by the nouveau riche of America with every vacant lot converting into slivers of beach frontage creating disturbances in profusion loud and offensive to generations gone deaf with headaches on full ahead jammed grudge to grudge, tight life parked through freedom second Sunday August chaos without parallel. Alun Robert Born in Scotland of Irish lineage, Alun Robert is a prolific creator of lyrical verse achieving success in poetry competitions in Europe and North America. His poems have featured in international literary magazines, anthologies and on the web. He is particularly inspired by ekphrastic challenges. In September 2019, he was the featured writer for the Federation of Writers Scotland. ** See Here We are not the only ones who dream of reaching escape velocity here by some radical magic fish are flying not in a slow glide skimming the waves not in leaps ecstatic with release like whales and dolphins flinging their bodies up entirely into the unfamiliar atmosphere they still can breathe even though they must return to water no–these have no mammal lungs to meet the stringencies of air and yet they rise above our rooftops into the bird contested sky without wings or memory of flight nothing but hope and defiance reaching past the limits of their biology to know the feel of air everywhere around them the bright caress of an unfamiliar element a shout of joy miraculous in that eternal dance between desire and definition we recognize so well Mary McCarthy Mary McCarthy is a writer who was also a Registered Nurse, whose work has appeared in many online and print journals. She has been a Pushcart nominee and has an electronic chapbook, Things I Was Told Not to Think About, available as a free download from Praxis magazine. ** Sugar Beach The city grows, it is frantic and furious, there is no stopping it. I will rise in its fury. I have always been that fish that could fly; I have always upturned runes and talismans like sandcastles sweeping out to sea. My trident is a rake for shells and barnacles. My fins are stardust, crackling sapphires. Well, your mouth was full of gummy bears and bottle-cap sours, but mine was a pillar of salt. I looked back, and my dusty fins found eternity’s gaze. Look, the sky is yellow, and the houses are wooden Monopoly toys, or Lego. What if these black fossils beneath us were a lantern, instead of whispers of extinction? What if these leaping sardines were luminaries, instead of omens? The swallows falter in the low distant light. Lorette C. Luzajic Lorette C. Luzajic is the founder and editor of The Ekphrastic Review. She is an award winning visual artist whose works are collected all over the world. Visit her at www.mixedupmedia.ca. ** Accidental Ginny had asked Davy to move the bird feeder before she saw the blood red bird with dusty black wings. “I changed my mind,” she said. “Maybe you should leave the feeder where it’s at.” Davy blew on his coffee. He didn’t look up from his phone. “How come? Those sparrows are crapping all over the deck.” Ginny got more coffee. She looked out at the bird feeder balanced on a crooked pole a few feet from the deck railing. She remembered how she and Davy had jammed the rusted pole into the soft ground, not thinking it might be too close. “You’re right,” she said. “About the sparrows, I mean. But there’s this weird red bird coming by that I’ve never seen before.” Davy shrugged. “So what? A bird’s a bird. It’ll crap, too.” “I guess,” she said. “But it looks kind-of sick and dirty and lost. We should help it.” Davy stood up from the dinette table and put his phone in his back pocket. “Not really,” he said. “It’s probably just here spreading disease. I’ll move the feeder this weekend. Last thing I want is some deadly virus.” *** Ginny sat on the sofa and watched the birds after Davy went to work. The red bird with black wings showed up around 10 a.m., the same time it had the day before. She noticed the bird’s tail was ragged and that its head looked scaly. She paged through a dog-eared Roger Tory Peterson book and paused on a picture of a scarlet tanager. Flipping to the range maps, she saw that the robin-sized bird wasn’t native. She had heard some things about “accidentals” and jumped on the Internet to look it up. “It’s a scarlet tanager,” she told Davy when he got home. “It must’ve gotten caught up in some awful weather thing—you know, like a wind shear.” Davy walked by her to the stove. He lifted the lids on the pots. “This ready?” Ginny nodded and held up the picture in the Peterson book. “See,” she said. “Look.” She waved the book near his face but he didn’t look up from scooping macaroni into a bowl. “Yeah, I see it.” Davy ladled chili over the macaroni and sprinkled cheddar over the top. “Want this?” Ginny shook her head. “No. I’ll fix my own.” Davy grabbed a beer from the refrigerator and sat down. “Quit thinking about that bird,” he said. “And stay away from it. You’ll get Avian flu or something.” *** Ginny slept in the next morning even though she usually got up with Davy. She laid in bed and listened to the songbirds and metallic clap of leaves. When Davy came in to slip on his shoes, she kept her eyes closed until he nudged her. “You’re not sick are you?” he said. “I told you that bird was no good.” Ginny turned over and pulled the blanket over her ears. “No. I’m just tired,” she said. “It’s not the bird.” Davy stepped away without saying goodbye. She waited for the door to shut and kicked off the sheets and pulled on a robe. Going to the kitchen, she poured the last cup of coffee and stood by the window in her bare feet. Shreds of pink clouds crossed over the sun, scattering thin shadows on the ground. She blinked as the sun grew brighter, then saw the striped tabby as it prowled on the deck. “Hey.” Ginny rapped on the window. The cat stopped and stared. Ginny cinched the sash on her robe and stepped outside. She threw a stick. Then a pebble. The cat skirted away. “Get the hell outta here.” Ginny shook her fist. A breeze blew her hair over her face as the cat raced into an overgrown yew. Turning to go back in, she noticed a stray candy wrapper from the neighbor’s garbage and bent down to pick it up. Before she could grab it, the wind tossed it toward the feeder and toward the red bird, laying twisted and twitching near the edge of the deck. “Oh no.” Ginny hurried to the red bird and knelt beside it. The bird tweeted violently and spun in a circle, one wing stretched fully, the other crooked and sticking up like a sail. “Be still,” she whispered. “Sh-sh-sh.” Peeling off her robe, Ginny mounded it in a pile and sculpted the edges to make a soft pocket in the center. The bird blinked, its gray beak half open. “Here baby.” Ginny cupped her hands under the bird’s belly, feeling the rapid beat of its heart. The bird’s broken wing fluttered as its good wing slapped her forearms. “Here you go. Sh-sh-sh.” Ginny set the bird on the robe, watching it struggle to pull its wings back in place. She noticed the missing tail feathers, and the pimpled skin on the back of its head where feathers had been. She wiped the grit from the bird’s back using the tip of her pajama top, and removed a tangle of short dry grass from the bird’s tiny talons. “What ‘cha got there?” Ginny turned when she heard a raspy voice. A man in an over-washed bucket hat and crooked aviator glasses was peering through the slats of the deck. “A scarlet tanager,” Ginny said. “It’s hurt.” The man stood on his tip-toes and gripped the rail for balance. “You don’t say.” The man cleared phlegm from his throat. “They don’t usually come up this far.” The bird chirped as its legs curled toward its belly. “It’s really hurt,” Ginny said. “I think that cat did it.” The man shook his head. “Could be,” he said. “Damn cats.” Ginny stroked the bird’s downy belly. “It’s heart,” she said. “It’s beating so fast.” The wrinkles deepened on the man’s face. “Best leave it be,” he frowned. “I can’t,” she said. “It needs help.” The man smoothed the oily gray hairs that stuck from his hat. He gazed at the sky and pushed up his glasses. “I wouldn’t,” he said. “Birds like that. They don’t belong here.” Ginny crouched as the splinters from the worn deck pierced her knees. The bird cheeped quietly as its eyes began to close. “Better wash your hands,” the man said grimly. “Those migrating birds carry disease, you know.” Ann Kammerer Ann Kammerer lives in East Lansing, Michigan, where she works as a freelancer for business and higher ed. Her short fiction has appeared in several regional publications and magazines, and has received top honours in fiction writing contests. ** Anatomical Venus (Museum of Natural History, Florence, Italy) It’s no surprise the wax men are wholly clinical; no doubt they were fashioned solely to instruct. Flayed and stoic, they stand or recline impassive, rigid as medieval effigies. And it’s no surprise the women are another story. They take everything lying down, heads thrown back, lips open in the manner of their saintly counterparts who swoon above the altars of Europe’s great cathedrals, though it’s clear each woman here was made for more earthly appetites, the men who bent to mold them being neither gods nor angels. And though it’s certain their intention was to banish mystery, it’s also plain the sculptors loved these silent beauties clothed in nothing save what’s most unlikely-- a gold tiara or strings of opalescent pearls-- as if death or disease demands such inexplicable decorum. No doubt desire was the genesis of each Venus’s molten birth, or else they would not rest on beds of velvet, luxuriant hair plaited and clutched in an uplifted hand, or massed around them like sea grass combed by tide, glass eyes gone wide or drowsy in the throes of being hollowed-- now made whole again. And there’s no doubt each man took up his task like any adept creator. Here, a handful of formlessness. Here, a handful of amber honeycomb which became, at last, a figure pliant as any good virgin sighing the graced notes of her breathless Fiat. Only one thing’s left to wonder… whether it was the limit of his own mortality that forced each man to cease just shy of granting breath to mouths sun-warmed by slant light, or if each had come to understand his Venus, if given a heart that could clench, would refuse the cold hands that sought to ravage her. Frank Paino Frank Paino was born in Cleveland, Ohio and earned an MFA from Vermont College. His poems have appeared in a variety of literary publications, including: Crab Orchard Review, Catamaran, North American Review, World Literature Today, The Briar Cliff Review, Lake Effect and the anthology, The Face of Poetry. His third book, Obscura, is forthcoming from Orison Books in 2020. Frank’s first two volumes of poetry were published by Cleveland State University Press: The Rapture of the Matter (1991) and Out of Eden (1997). His awards include a Pushcart Prize, The Cleveland Arts Prize in Literature, and a 2016 Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council. T.J. Eckleburg’s Eyes have taken up residence in the street outside my apartment, about twenty feet above my top floor, fifth floor walkup, so that T.J. can’t see directly into my apartment but can see me fully when I stand in the window looking down into the street, or, as I am now, looking up at T.J.’s eyes, which hover immovably, about fifty feet apart, so that I can never look into both his eyes, plural, at once, but must move my eyes from one of his eyes to the other, left to right, or right to left. What interests me is that T.J. Eckleburg’s eyes have come to me rather than my having to go to them. I thought the thing was: one must drive past, or under T.J. Eckleburg’s eyes. To say they are a symbol for an omniscient God is too easy. They are a symbol for Vladimir Putin’s hacking into American democracy. No. I’m kidding. This much is true, like the eyes in certain paintings, no matter where you are, you can move over here, move over there, you can go downstairs, sit on the stoop, or walk to the bodega, the eyes follow wherever you go. Each eye is about six feet wide and three feet high. I thought you would want to know this. I am now on the fire escape looking between the eyes, focusing on neither one, but by looking between them, my peripheral vision allows me to get a good view of the total picture and here is what I have done with T.J. Eckleburg’s eyes, I have turned them into the smiling pink plastic cat clock, where the eyes go one way while the tail goes another swish swish swish because you can’t let T.J. Eckleburg’s eyes take over, you have to have some say in the matter. Lee Stockdale Lee Stockdale lives in Asheville where he labors over the octopus tentacles of Forgiveness, his second novel. He holds an MFA from Queens University, Charlotte, NC, and a BA from the University of Washington, Seattle. He loves The Great Gatsby, upon which his poem, T.J. Eckleburg’s Eyes, is "ekphrasticed." Erased de Kooning Goodbye charcoal. Goodbye ink. Goodbye curious visitors. Goodbye crayons numbering more than 48 and less than 64. Goodbye Dutch mumbling. Goodbye pencils 1 and 2 and 7. Goodbye gestures, grand and hidden. Goodbye New York City Harbor in daylight, but mainly at night. Goodbye tics, not quite hidden. Goodbye 61 consecutive work days. Goodbye hang ups. Goodbye eraser crumbs. Don’t sneeze. Or do. Goodbye woman as wife and subject. Goodbye women and women. Hello traces. Hello shadows large and medium size and small. Hello hints, almost too subtle. Wave like the queen when you wave. Lots and lots of hellos. Mike James Mike James makes his home outside Nashville, Tennessee. His fourteen poetry collections include: Parades (Alien Buddha), Jumping Drawbridges in Technicolor (Blue Horse), First-Hand Accounts from Made-Up Places (Stubborn Mule), Crows in the Jukebox (Bottom Dog), My Favorite Houseguest (FutureCycle), and Peddler’s Blues (Main Street Rag.) Watch Hour Dear / me dear / old me dear / Iowa hospital room / I left a / piece of myself still / attached / to the plastic IV / bag / sucking salt sodium chloride / up my veins / As I rambled / through the halls imagining my / cot ride not as chore or / weakness but / langor / The perks of paying top dollar 500 / a night / for my very own room with a TV and graham / crackers / Whatʻs funny is how experiences put things into / perspective / Itʻs not funny just / morbid / So ergo an hour / before the ER / visit there was a / class discussion I wasnʻt / paying / attention to instead wondering what / the / painting / that people make phone case notebooks of / was / the one with / a watch melting like butter over a / bedside table and / its twin / hanging over a branch / laundry set out to dry / and / then I was cold / not poetic / but I said that my / bones / were dry / ice and coursing through / them the veins was liquid nitrogen / I didnʻt know / two hours later I would be pancaked / across a cotton / cot like the watch in Daliʻs painting / The Persistence of Me / except this time this watchʻs time was / ticking as the / EMTs measured the coughs rasps / of beats and stuck / electrodes on the melting / butter / pale skin of my abdomen / silver IVs up my forearm / minute hands / I promise / I promised my dad on / the phone / en route to the Iowa hospital that I was / OK / fine / great / good but / you donʻt know you were near death until youʻre not / Watches hang from trees like / fruit / until / theyʻre on your father's wrist / Charlotte Hughes Charlotte Hughes is a high school junior in Columbia, South Carolina. She has attended the Iowa Young Writerʻs Studio, is an editor for Polyphony Lit and The Haloscope Review, and is the editor-in-chief of The Palette. You can find her poems in The Louisville Review and Duck Lake Journal. Disengagement Before the grotesque blocks of flats docked at their reclaimed berths, mocking the banlieu with their eager, selfing, cargo of the briefly curious. Before Starbucks, retail, le petit train and authentic seafood restaurants. Before the glass and steel of le Musee de Civilisations de l'Europe... and other ground-breaking initiatives. Before the sea's romance was packed into steel boxes and express-loaded onto bigger, uglier, IT'd boxes on time. Before the football club was taken, unseen and repackaged by far-off TV executives. The old port, before it was old, emerged mysteriosly from the sooty fog each morning. Every looming bow and deck derrick clearing amid a thousand deep tobacco'd conversations. Every tug and pilot cutter phutting and spluttering through the water to push and guide the steamers. Every tonne of cargo circulating in the smoke. Little pieces of the imagined world, shared accross France. And Notre Dame de la Garde, cleaned and polished now, new then, watching the change from her hill, aloof. Ronnie Smith Ronnie Smith was born and grew up in the west of Scotland where he eventually discovered that people didn't laugh at his efforts at writing short stories. He contributed fiction and commentary to a number of magazines and got involved in editing. In his day job Ronnie worked in international education administration, allowing him to travel widely at various companies' expense, and lived in Romania for eight years before moving to south west France. In truth, Ronnie has become somewhat rootless but he considers this to be a good thing as it relieves him of the usual tribal duties associated with modern nationalism. These days, Ronnie teaches History at a French High School, contributes to the weekly Scottish Review and writes whatever comes into his head at any given time. There will be a novel at some point... Umezawa in Sagami Province Mount Fuji is as tranquil as this stream below. What do I know of silence? The stream takes away all noise and my words. Cranes have taken refuge in foothills in order to escape humans trampling on their sense of peace. Five cranes are feeding from the stream, eating the silence. Two other cranes try to find the top of Mount Fuji, knowing there is more silence to be found there. How much quietness does anyone need? More, the cranes beg, More. The mountain provides. The mountain’s imposing cone is deep blue at the base of the mountain and the mountain fades to light blue and white at the summit, rising above the green slopes. My eyes cannot speak as they find the top of Mount Fuji, where everything will vanish into stillness. Bands of pink-tinted clouds cover parts of sky with veils. Cranes know this is where words do not belong. When I never know what to say, I try to find some words. Words destroy the temporary moment for everyone. Cranes always know where to find translucent light, and they nest unobtrusively while practicing being a part of soundlessness. What do I know of meditation? What do I know of silence? Wind whispers softly; too much noise for the mountain, waking from its nap. Martin Willitts, Jr Martin Willitts Jr has 24 chapbooks including the winner of the Turtle Island Quarterly Editor’s Choice Award, The Wire Fence Holding Back the World (Flowstone Press, 2017), plus 16 full-length collections including The Uncertain Lover, Coming Home Celebration. Forthcoming books include Harvest Time (Deerbrook Press) and the Blue Light Award winner The Temporary World. He is an editor for Comstock Review. |
The Ekphrastic Review
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February 2025
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