Sower with Setting Sun

He strides across the freshly ploughed and harrowed land
scattering into its furrows the seeds from his sack
where they will germinate in this fallow and fertile soil
such honest toil sustaining him and his kith and kin.
Behind him stands a vast field of wheat the fruit
of past labours stretching like a yellow sea to the horizon
then seeming to merge into the rays of the setting sun
which radiate from the earth into the heavens above.
Paying no heed to the blackbirds following him as he goes
he allows them their share of the seeds that he sows
for here is God’s plenty and the cup of nature overflows.
This humble man has long since returned to the earth
from whence he came and these ancient fields
will now be sown and harvested by machines
consigning him and his ilk to the land of our dreams.
Yet in van Gogh’s painting the sower sows eternally on
reminding us of a simpler world that has forever gone.

Ian Fletcher

Born and raised in Cardiff, Wales, Ian has an MA in English from Oxford University. He lives in Taiwan with his wife, two daughters and cat. He teaches English in a high school. He has had poems and short stories published in The Ekphrastic Review, 1947 A Literary Journal, Dead Snakes, Schlock! Webzine, Short-story.me, Anotherealm, Under the Bed, A Story In 100 Words, Poems and Poetry, Friday Flash Fiction, and in various anthologies. 

Contact Sheet
After Contact Sheet #4539 of three different sets of identical twins, by Diane Arbus

In our secret language,
we float upside down.


It’s like speaking to a mirror. Or
an x-ray. Those shrouded outlines

presenting us with maps.

Here is your tongue, sister. Let
me share it.

Here is my hand. You take it
into 
yourself, a 

piece left over
from the time before

when we slept in
the aperture of our
mother’s body.

Here are our eyes. Pinholes
or
cataracts. 

Equally blind.

Sarah Nichols

Sarah Nichols is a co-editor of Thank You for Swallowing, an online journal of feminist protest poetry. She is  the author of three chapbooks, including She May Be a Saint (Hermeneutic Chaos Press, 2016), and Edie (Whispering): Poems from Grey Gardens (Dancing Girl Press, 2015). Her work has also appeared in Yellow Chair Review, Rogue Agent, and Noble/Gas Qtrly. 

Anatolian Alchemy


Now the Queen’s dusk
            purples
           
a city-warm ache
love’s red ink
            the ghost


 fingerprints
            of midnight


when she cried
in fire and outrage
and broke a broad frozen
            quiet


and night
            transformed


empty streets
flowers
            rosy fingers                


songs                                      
secreted in the pensive ark

Abra Bertman

This poem was written after listening to "Anatolian Alchemy" by Arifa.
​
Abra Bertman lives in Amsterdam where she teaches English literature at the International School of Amsterdam. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in WomenArts Quarterly Journal, The Citron Review, Rust + Moth, Paper Nautilus, Absinthe Poetry Review The Inflectionist Review and Spry Literary Journal, among others. Abra was nominated for the Best of the Net Award in 2016. Her poem “When the World Comes Home,” a collaboration with jazz pianist Franz Von Chossy, appears in the liner notes of the CD of the same name.

The Now and the Not Yet

fifty words for rain . . .
the coming storm
sudden with summer


the leaves fall by the hundreds --
the reflecting pool
bursting, combustive


downtown --
crystalline icicles
arresting the flight of light


sunrise surprise:
white, luminous
bones

Bill Waters

Editor's note: The Now and the Not Yet is a poem from The Luzajic Variations, a chapbook featuring the poetry of Bill Waters and the artwork of The Ekphrastic Review's editor, Lorette C. Luzajic. Bill wrote these poems using only titles from Lorette's paintings, creatively rearranged.

Only 32 copies of this limited edition chapbook have been printed. 

Click here to get yours via Etsy. $10 each, includes shipping.


Known primarily for his Japanese-style micropoetry, Bill Waters also writes ekphrastic poetry, found verse, book spine poetry, light verse, and all manner of short prose. More of his writing can be found at his blog Bill Waters ~~ Haiku (http://bit.ly/145diBy) and his “blog-within-a-blog” Bill Waters ~~ NOT Haiku (http://bit.ly/1NZSyRo). Bill lives in Pennington, New Jersey, U.S.A., with his wife and three cats.

Nativity 

The baby Jesus is sorry
                                      to command the sight line,
our eyes abandoning
                                      the ever-shadowy Joseph 
right away,
                                      knowing him a walk-on
to restore Mary’s rep.
                                      We rest a moment
on the mater dolorosa,
                                      a blue horror
hugging the emptiness
                                      where her babe 
would have been
                                      had he not slipped
from her grasp.
                                      Hollowed,
she has chewed
                                      fingers to the quick.
We empathize,
                                      yet can’t wait to find
the tiny imp,
                                      God become man,
perched at the lip
                                      of mystery,
God’s own omphalos.
                                      Look at the Divine
behind, split in two,
                                      light and dark,
(Mani right after all)
                                      wondering what to do
with this foundling.
                                      Lift him up again, certainly,
but how and how high?
                                      Not back to his mother,
already drowning
                                      in an ocean of tears,
or to Joseph,
                                      red-handed in the way of all men
but higher still,
                                      the way of the cross,
out of sight.

Devon Balwit

This poem was written as part of the surprise Christmas poetry challenge.
​​
Devon Balwit is a poet and educator from Portland, Oregon. She has a chapbook, Forms Most Marvelous, forthcoming from dancing girl press (summer 2017). Her recent poems have appeared in numerous print/on-line journals, among them: Oyez, Red Paint Hill, The Ekphrastic Review, Serving House Journal, The Journal of Applied Poetics, Emerge Literary Journal, Timberline Review, Trailhead Magazine VCFA, The Prick of the Spindle, and Permafrost.