 House by the Railroad, by Edward Hopper (USA) 1925 Standing Strong This house, tattered and old, cannot help but creak under the pressure of its passerby, like a stampede, it passes through– shaking the world beneath its feet. Everyday, 3 o’clock sharp, the ground trembles and the walls fight to stay up. This railway, shiny and new, passes an old building standing tall. Since the beginning of this venture, back and forth along this track, that home had earned plenty of cracks. This house stands alone; all others are long gone. It stays unmoving and strong– as this earthquake of a train continues on. Caoimhe Dunne Caoimhe Dunne is an Irish-Canadian student at Laurentian University who enjoys taekwondo, swimming, dance, and arts.. "I’ve always enjoyed photos and painting, whether that's through looking at them or by being the artist capturing them. I’ve always enjoyed art of any kind, painting and writing are things I cannot live without."
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 The Enigma of the Day, by Giorgio de Chirico (Italy) 1914 Tristesse I Menard of my uncharted cavern-heart; high priest of that tristesse which I profess at depths perhaps deceptively abstruse: embalm the bruise-barred sky that lies beyond; administer the sting of vacancy, and wash me in the wake that dreams bequeath when, having over-promised, they make off abrupt across the jilted, jolted dawn. In other words, please show me what I am, or rather what it is I think I am, or rather what I think I'd rather be. II Amid your tongue-tip-twisting anagrams of certain former worlds and phantom ones, there loom and gleam all vast and vespertine the follies of a future unattained. That is, a largeness not just lost, misplaced, but never to be found, and therefore past, a wild surmise, or wink thereof, no more. Its shadows weigh like cromlechs on the ground and brook no trespass from the daunted realm of what are said to be the living, leaving only some officious effigy, a station-master maybe -- vague, remote -- to look out with a blindness interposed at new and cryptic tidelines which bear down like nightfall on a revolution quelled. III Just when I think that I have gone and found the More I try to seek but can't express, the reverb haze of déjà vu descends and summers past unmask themselves at last as stokers of the embers in my brain. I know that I could wait and wait and wait, as though for martlets fixed in viewless flight, but they, those summers, cleared and packed away -- well, they are never coming back again. Besides, if truth be told, it seems to me that in the end, when all is said, and said, your squares of squares can only kill the Thing, which -- concretised as well as travertined, ensnared, diminished, wan -- is soon exposed as, synchronously, propagule and host of that which I had thought I ached to flee. Thus trapped, denied, defrauded, I am left, or feel I'm left, with nothing very much: an orphan longing -- spinster-knowledge -- this? The upshot is my ochre-misted soul stands no less arid, no less desolate, than your piazzas as they echo in the gloaming. Sanjeev Braich Sanjeev Braich is, or perhaps at some deep level longs to be, no more than a writer manqué. He lives and works in London.  Mauretania, Full Speed Ahead, Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums (Britain) 1907 Old Vessels He courted you for months and brought you to New York’s best houses. The notices were fair, I’m sure, but he craved a prize. Aboard Mauretania for the crossing, he probably left you in a deck chair overnight while he sat at the bar plotting his next one. Now wedged in steerage in this leaky vessel of a shop, jilted and jacketless, his name tattooed to your spine, you sell yourself for nickels and dimes. I thumb your leaves back to front to learn your recent history: a tryst with a casual reader who probably found you in a dump like this, wrote his name on your flyleaf, took you to the Caymans or the Keys, then dropped you here with just a postcard to mark the point he stopped. I am so sorry. My dear, you deserve better. I watch the dim ones shuffle past, shuffle past. Only a few bright ones scan the shelves for ones like you for what we needed long ago and still need now-- a passage missing from our own accounts to turn us elsewhere inside out to another entirely while remaining remotely ourselves. After all, isn’t this why we read—so turning a page might connect us to the other? We have all have been with others, been used, amused, and passed around. I open you slowly to your middle signature, press my nose to your yellow leaves, breathe in almonds and vanilla flowers, yes, recto-verso, repeat, yes, yes, so bosky and feminine your scent, I think you were a Daphne once and I am mad Apollo for you now. Your aubergine cover trending mauve suggests a Bordeaux tonight. Are you free? Of course. I’ll tip the steward as we debark. Daniel Coyle Daniel Coyle recently retired from a career as a harmless drudge in the information industry. He lives in Washington DC. His poems have appeared in the Wallace Stevens Journal, Arkansas Review, Fortnightly Review, Blue Unicorn. To an Artist of Ardent Alchemy after Winter Landscape Painting Vibrates in you a light invisible to my eyes— myriad lights: virginal white zeal of the skyline, daubs of primrose blushing, bleeding into pink bloom, gold vermilion pennons gashing, flashing against pale blue skerries of ice, more like a prism spinning white-spanned shine into a rainbow spine that cuts the hand holding its fires than a hearth’s blue bleak embers that fall, gall themselves into glory; higher up, a duskier mellowness waxing deeper, more delicious: milky purple fresh-steamed taro mashed with startling magenta pitahaya, dashes of ripe papaya. The zenith is a half-shadowed delft blue plate holding all this ebullient copia in equipoise. What does your mind make of this and the mazy glows reflected on sculpted slopes of snow, an element light has to scrape harder than air because heavier, coarser, tamping down plant relics, but blazoned with opalescent crystals of a flora all its own? Are you staring into centers of water lilies, putting your ear to flaring clarions of daffodils, straining your neck under a trellised cathedral dome of wisteria, cardinal creeper, hummingbird vine and bougainvillea? Do you reminisce on a hike up the same mountain in autumn, where a single rustle of your boots upset a cluster of gentians’ white china goblets and spilled a wreath of azure flames, scorching leather with Persephone’s ghost? Hopkins would’ve glimpsed the word inscape in your winter landscape, where you burn down with ardent brushstrokes stark abysms of frost, solder fall’s bare bottom and the brink of spring with Vergissmeinnichts, scumble them into one whole vision, one reverie shimmering with coral, cyan, lilac, lemon, auburn, organic kaleidoscope at the apotheosis of orgy. Yours is not a mind of winter, or rather, not winter alone. Thou art lightning and love, I found it, a winter and warm. What you paint are the voices of those sunset-swathed, alpenglow-gowned, starry- sharded conifers gone suddenly tropical with blue morphos red admirals and gemmed hummers crying out Glory be to God for dappled things-- and Leon, because you make it so, winter is warm, soft with sun, acicular scintillas selving as leaves. O Christ, Miraculous Light, come to these trees bared of tinsel, baptize them with pied beauty. ** Finding Tranquility after Finding Tranquility Gently I wake, walk towards the mountain lake. Autumn’s mild ardency has calmed its flame. I rest my hand on the canvas, feel a pink ache flicker across the flesh, make a phantom frame for the sweet expanse of blue, rutilant clouds diffusing dazzling warmth to wisps of rose, smoky crimson smudging downy undersides, shadows relieving more the exuberant glows. The mountain stands carved in lapis lazuli, coolly backlit, retreating into tacit black. Pines and firs have veiled themselves fully in textureless mystery. Crocus, mauve, lilac flecks flitter stilly in the unleafing grove. Hand stilled in exhaustion, trance, or love. My body feels ambered in turpentine love mingled from my easel and the pine grove. Water breathes as if asleep. Fragrant lilac memories sweep my face like veils fully swathing a bride. Her hidden eyes are black as woods in twilit lake, or are they lapis lazuli? Lambent shadows damask her serene glows. She is nearby, yet I could not touch her sides-- her warmth is diffused like shed petals of rose. In watery reflections she wanders like clouds, Restlessly tranquil. Her image cannot be framed. The lake shudders. With rapture, or is it ache? I hum to my painting, oh my fierce gentle flame. Fresh, awake, I walk towards the mountain lake. ** L’Air, La Mer after Evening Ride Irrefutable light in his backturned eyes to agonize illusions of white-- Rainbow hidden in his horse’s mane radiant as pain as they wade into the night-- Night’s portal prismatic with blood, colorful mud plashing at the low tide-- To sempiternal somwhere, everywhere, l’air, la mer, out for an evening ride. ** Evensong after Sunset Vibrations Sing the grasses: let evening come. Let evening come on wings of surging clouds. Let light plash their plumes. Let light dash itself into infinitesimal grains each its fantastic hue. Let evening come briefly to bury time in colourful composts of inflamed airborne water. Let the sky’s banquet begin. Lay out the bouquets. Pile high the fruit baskets. Scatter rinds to the wind. We are the dark silhouettes of stalks and spat out seeds. We grow in fecund humus fermented from light’s decay. We swish lushly in sky’s dazzling soil. Evening is the season we sprout, flourish, sing. Evening’s garden abloom, We fly on rooted wings. Lucie Chou Lucie Chou is an ecopoet working in mainland China. Currently an undergraduate majoring in English language and literature, she is also interested in the ecotone between ekphrasis and ecopoetics. Her work has appeared in the Entropy Magazine, the Black Earth Institute Blog, Sky Island Journal, the Tiny Seed Journal, and in the Plant Your Words Anthology published by Tiny Seed Press. A poem is forthcoming in from Tofu Ink Arts, both in print and online. She has published a debut collection of ecopoetry, Convivial Communiverse, with Atmosphere Press. She hikes, gardens, and studies works of natural history by Victorian writers with gusto.  The Third of May 1808, by Francisco Goya (Spain) 1814 That Guy I’m not the guy in the white shirt about to run red. I would not have had the strength to raise my arms like Christ wondering why dear old dad had deserted him, not with that cyclopean musket staring me in the face. And I wouldn’t wear yellow pants, even on Madrid’s finest golf course. I’m not the guy on the legs of the guy sleeping in a pool of sandy blood, fish-mouthed, his compatriot staring through closed lids at stars black. They were the brave vanguard, not where I would have been and my personal space needs prohibit even posthumous contact with a dead man’s legs. I’m not the guy in Christ’s right armpit, looking serenely past the row of fuzzy felt hats lined up like dice cups in a street con. He has accepted his fate and waits with eyes open. For me it be would resentment, not acceptance. Fault not fate. And horseshoe mustaches went out with the 70s, I think. I’m either the guy framed by the left armpit, three rows of buffer bodies between me and the bullets, crouched over, hands to mouth, chewing nails, a cartoon rat with a wedge of Wisconsin, looking away in hopes that lack of eye contact will render me invisible, childlike, hiding in plain sight or the guy closest to you on the right, posture perfect, impeccably and appropriately attired for the task at hand, position locked, white rucksack across my back like angel wings, ready and willing to climb that steeple beyond the hills, rising into that black sky, with you. James King James King’s poetry has appeared in The Dillydoun Review, The Thieving Magpie, Big City Lit, and others. James is also the author of the award-winning novel, Bill Warrington’s Last Chance. He lives in Wilton, Connecticut.  Join us for a magical workshop on the Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershoi. Discover and discuss the work of this enigmatic artist, and see how his art can inspire your poetry and stories.
You won't want to miss this one! Sign up below. $35 Canadian dollars is approximately $25 USD. See you there!  The Bridge Approach and the City Gates of Heidelberg, by David Roberts R.A. (Scotland) 1837 View Across the Bridge The painter sat at the end of the bridge facing the gatehouse. Its towers gazed down upon those entering the city, silent but unimposing. The church steeple rose high in the distance behind them, not to be outdone. His eyes darted between his subject and the paper in a rhythmic pattern. This dance frequently changed pace, keeping time with the late afternoon sun and its moods. People passed to and fro, going about their daily errands. Here a vendor selling his wares, there a couple meeting, here a woman conversing with a friend, there a family taking in the view. In a moment, it would all be gone. It was his task to capture this ephemeral time that encompassed the past, present, and imagined. He had carefully placed the fixed features of this scene on the paper. At least, the features he wished to remain fixed. Now he must determine who would become the permanent inhabitants. His eyes grazed across the bridge, searching for something inexplicable. They settled on a group of three, two women and a man, rapt in conversation. The man held a portfolio under his arm. Another artist, perhaps? But he did not hold it as if it contained his very world. He accentuated the air with his walking stick as he spoke. Slashing and jabbing as if in some invisible duel. Parry, lunge, feint, fléche. The ladies laughed as he gestured, much to his delight. He had won their attention and their enjoyment, but could he win a place in their memories? What title would be written above his image in their mind’s eye? This could only be guessed at. So, he fought on against his unseen foe. Courage and determination in his heart. The painter’s eyes passed to the next member of this trio. The curls in her hair caught the light as well as any jewel. She was polished and preened to her satisfaction. She stood seemingly engrossed, oblivious to all else around her, testing her charms on her companions. This was all practice. Her mind wandered away from the bridge, down thoroughfares and alleyways, past courtyards and facades, into the presence of another. But she wouldn’t share this. She smiled and gladly gave her remaining attention, pretending her world was right before her. The other woman turned to the painter. Their eyes met for a moment. It was not a meeting of two individuals, but of a subject being examined. She held his gaze, though she knew not why. Even at a distance, she could feel the painterly stare soften into a human one as the guise of specimen fell away. There was a brief and subtle connection between two who may never meet again. The artist’s brush hung in the air in a pregnant pause, sensing the change, unsure of where to fall next. Her companions beseeched her attention once again and she turned away, breaking the newly formed bond. Though outwardly engaged, her mind wandered back to the painter. She wondered how she would appear in his work, if indeed she would appear at all. A part of her wished to approach him and see what hand was fed by those eyes. Decorum bade her stay. Her feet never strayed, but in her mind, she boldly traversed the bridge. She remarked how well he had captured the scene and was then met with her own image staring back at her. Would she like it? Would it shock her? It is not often that one gets to see how they are perceived by others. A part of her ached to see it, to know. She glanced back towards the end of the bridge. The painter betrayed nothing. His eyes had since wandered. Forgotten so quickly? Her companions had not noticed, but they grew weary of their current locale. There were better places to be. She could not agree with them. The sun was casting its rays far and wide as it began its slow descent. Shadows formed and fell away in gentle play. They left no trace in this world but returned again and again in the memory of man and stone. In that instance, she could see through the painter’s eyes. Though they never spoke a word, though she never saw his work, she understood it all. The companions turned to leave, reentering the cloister of the city. She paused and looked once more to see the sun, and the water, and the forest, and the bridge standing as the gateway between it all. The painter watched them leave, yet there they remained on his page. Forever standing in a moment of conversation and curiosity. Two eyes emblazoned in ink. Two eyes seeking his own. He broke away from them and renewed his search. They still needed company. A solitary figure leaning against the edge of the bridge caught his eye. He blotted this figure in, an uncertain smudge hidden from the light, an enigma. The figure had paid no heed to the artist or any other passerby. His gaze was drawn deep into the river below, exploring its murky depths. He imagined hidden kingdoms far beneath where no mortal may venture except, perhaps, in dreams. He journeyed to these realms and their shimmering halls, a wonder to explore, if indeed he sought to explore. In truth, he sought to escape and chose the waters of his childhood as a reprieve for his troubled mind. He sighed, drawing his eyes away from the glistening waters and up to the statue whose shade he occupied. There was no fantasy in its stone features. No fairy worlds to be found. He turned towards the bridge and its ever-abundant flow of faces. Some fair, some course, some severe, some pleasant, never knowing what lay beneath their feet. He looked to the end of the bridge, the last extension of the city, an arm of human vision reaching out into the forest. Reaching, but for what? He turned to the gatehouse from where he had come. The entrance to a city that wound and turned in on itself. Enclosed in its own embrace. Did he wish to be free of it completely or merely carve out a new path within it? Had those arms always been so cold? No, no. They held the warmth of familiarity and the promise of possibility. Of new streets to be traversed and new companions to be met. All within comfort’s reach. He turned back towards the forest’s edge. There too lay possibility. But of what nature? Only experience would tell. His eyes caught the figure of a woman looking back in the same direction. He watched her turn and pass the threshold of the gatehouse. Back into the known. Would he follow? He stared in the space where she had been, almost expectantly, then returned his gaze to the water. For the moment, he would remain between it all. Enjoying the dimming light that brought his fantasies to life. The painter’s eyes stole away from this scene, feeling they were intruders in a contemplative affair. A contrasting event soon arrested their attention. Sound and movement filled the once murmuring air with energy. A group of students stood near the gatehouse after breaching its defenses. Eager minds and eager limbs vied for attention and excitement. The hard-earned pleasures of the day. Future doctors and lawyers, businessmen and bankers, professors and poets, husbands and fathers, but they did not think of this. They resided in the present. The sun on their faces and stones underfoot. They jumped and joked, lifting their voices to the sky, content in the eternity of the moment. The artist captured their essence but not their individualities. More mob than subject. Their noise held his attention longer than his brush. In a few strokes, they were captured. A mass of colour and shapes. The lively amusements of the students were also noted by a group of nuns who stood nearby resting in the shade against the wall of the bridge. The painter did not recognize their habits. They stood together in a way evocative of paintings through the centuries. The artistic eye could not help but be drawn. The steeple also kept its watchful eye upon them, within the gates and without. A towering shepherd over its flock. They spoke closely among themselves, passing smiles and absolution to those who crossed their path. Whether there to redeem or merely celebrate creation, each found their own enjoyment in the world outside of monastic life. The artist did not rush his brush. This was a solemn occasion. Soon however, the cathedral beckoned them to return. Its clamorous voice echoed across the valley in a symphony of tones. The day had come to its close. The spell of the bridge was broken. Consciously or otherwise, the many figures and their stories began to desert the artist’s stage. The light was now fading fast, encouraged by the din of the bells. The sun spilled across the trees and water in pools of crimson and orange, rose and violet, and finally inkwell blue the harbinger of night. The painter sat transfixed watching the dying light. Try as he might, he never could seem to capture it. As the bridge emptied of its inhabitants, he began to pack up his belongings. Brushes, cloths, paints, and paper were all tucked away with care. He examined the result of his labors with a keen eye. Each person stood as they should, caught in the midst of their experiences. He placed the page gingerly in his portfolio and stood to watch the retreat of the sun. It slowly faded back, allowing shadows to creep and stretch forward over the once illumined surfaces. The streetlamps would soon be lit to keep them at bay. Their glow would meet the weary traveler at their journey’s end, guiding them to safety. For the painter, they signaled that his day was done. He gathered the fragments of his world and made his way across the bridge, stepping through the very scenes he had created. The gates welcomed him as an old friend. He turned back once more to the view across the bridge, a view that would never again exist as it had that day, and smiled to know that it would always remain just as it was on his page. Anastasia Gumbiner Anastasia Gumbiner is a writer, artist, and art historian. Her work is inspired by art, music, and history. It has been published in Conceptions Southwest.  Ikigai, by Jackie Thomas (USA) contemporary Ikigai –after Jackie Thomas’s mixed-media piece by the same title, a Japanese term meaning “a reason for being” I. A bowl has purpose in not only what it holds but what it doesn’t. II. One season the cleft in the rock cradles water; another, a nest. III. To serve the tree well, a branch needs neither the bird nor her woven nest. IV. Take the river stone: smoothed by water’s punishment or ceaseless practice? V. Whips of flagella alone don’t move the round cell of bacterium. VI. What is the turtle bereft of shell, and the shell bereft of turtle? VII. Without the canvas, no painting; without foliage, no true camouflage. VIII. Green caterpillar sips milkweed, dreams in orange-black, the colours of flight. Shanna Powlus Wheeler Shanna Powlus Wheeler is the author of two books of poetry, Evensong for Shadows (Resource Publications/Wipf & Stock, 2018) and Lo & Behold (Finishing Line Press, 2009). Her work is forthcoming in the anthology Keystone: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (Penn State University Press, 2025). She teaches at Lycoming College and Pennsylvania College of Technology and lives in the Williamsport area with her family.
 Kiss Me You Fool, found art, photo provided by author Kiss Me, You Fool "Kiss me, you fool," she couldn’t say, so painted, on a quiet sign she hung, one evening, on the gate they’d passed perhaps a hundred times. All summer, as they crossed the stream and started up the sunken path she looked away—so he might see the link between her words and heart. At last, as leaves began to turn, he nodded at the fading board: "Whoever wrote that sign’s too proud-- or scared?—to risk what love deserves. His sign’s been there so long, I’m sure she’ll never kiss him now." Phil Vernon Phil Vernon returned to the UK in 2004 after two decades in different parts of Africa. His version of the mediaeval hymn "Stabat Mater" with music by Nicola Burnett Smith has been performed internationally. This Quieter Shore, a micro-collection, was published by Hedgehog Poetry Press in 2018. His full collections are Poetry After Auschwitz (Sentinel, 2020) and Watching the Moon Landing (Hedgehog Poetry Press, 2022). Since 1985 he has worked in the humanitarian and peacebuilding field. A new collection, Guerilla Country (Flight of the Dragonfly), due in March 2024, brings together his interest in landscape, peace and conflict. Twitter: @philvernon2 Musee De L'Orangerie on a Wednesday after Claude Monet’s Water Lilies, 1897-1898 lilies peek from blue softening centered flash strokes bridge unfocused in the distance like it is out of phase with the rest of us willows dip caution into shadowed corners a movement below the surface a canvas of water the inhale of spring I watch from the museum bench buoyed drinking it all in. Jackie Sizemore "With no hometown to speak of, I come from the Rust Belt, the South, and Tokyo. My poetry has appeared in Noble / Gas Qtrly, Print Oriented Bastards, Yes Poetry, and Variant Literature. My lyric essay was listed as a Notable Essay in the Best American Essays 2018. My projects have earned SAFTA and Wildacres residencies. I received my MFA from Boise State University and BA from Carnegie Mellon University." |
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