The Long Flight of Fancy Ancient Egyptians sharpened branches and looped strings of cotton to craft stockings Muslims created silk cushion covers and gloves in the round using pins Servants of Queen Elizabeth I knitted her silk stockings and fine woolens on coarse wires Curved needles produced layered sweaters that kept fisherman warm in harsh weather in Ireland and Scotland As they rode, Chinese caravan men grabbed handfuls of hair from camels to roll, twist and knit with sticks into foot warmers American women followed Eleanor Roosevelt to war armed with steel-stilettoed needles, gloves and balaclavas for the home front Today we knit with wings that carry us high above earthly stress, grief or loneliness Up here we fly free as the wearable art we create We pull in the thick green fur of mountain trees The sequin blue shimmer of lakes White fleece like fog settling into them Rayon sunsets of pink, purple and red Bamboo ribbons of rolling hills that offset the synthetic sheen of cities Silk slippery as the seaweed of mermaids' hair Each stitch a tick tenacious as ocean waves And then, because we already own at least fifteen such fashions We wrap a loved one or perhaps a shopping stranger in the warm saltwater constancy of our craft Ellaraine Lockie This poem was first published at The Centrifugal Eye. Ellaraine Lockie is a widely published and awarded poet, nonfiction book author and essayist. Her thirteenth chapbook, Tripping with the Top Down, was recently released from FootHills Publishing. Earlier collections have won the Encircle Publications Chapbook Contest, the Poetry Forum Press Chapbook Contest Prize, San Gabriel Valley Poetry Festival Chapbook Contest, the Aurorean Chapbook Choice Award and Best Individual Collection Award from Purple Patch magazine in England. Ellaraine teaches poetry workshops and serves as Poetry Editor for the lifestyles magazine, Lilipoh.
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Another surprise ekphrastic challenge! The Christmas story has been told so many times over the past 2000 years. We are so bombarded with carols, cards, and verses, year after year, that even the idea of looking for "the real meaning of Christmas" has itself become a cliche. If we slow down and contemplate the various facets of the nativity story through visual art, could we find in that silence something that has been lost? What is the truth under our over-saturated sea of festive narrative? Are there new discoveries to be made in old stories? Do we know the story by heart, or only think we do? Consider each of these paintings and see what kind of poetry or prose you are inspired to write. Send your best efforts to The Ekphrastic Review with "Christmas challenge" in the subject line, as soon as you can, and anytime before December 24. Please share this with any writers, readers, or art lovers you know so they can participate too. Many thanks. Lorette theekphrasticreview@gmail.com Plotters Reggie points at crooked lines on a piece of dirty paper. spent a week casing Miller’s Hardware like a fox hitting a henhouse. Chevis sit back, dumb as a bag of hammers, remembering times with Black Jack’s boys chasing Villa round Mexico with a finger faster than his head. he pretends to know this caper’s take’ll make up for Peoria when that smartass teller flipped a switch. Black and Shug scan the room for folks paying too much attention, or conspicuously unconcerned. Mudflap burns a Cuban, studying a newspaper like a painting eyes perusing pages like it was that picture above his head like he’d see Jack Johnson knock Gentleman Jim out again. smoke snakes under bowler brims, searching the felt for escape. Charnita weaves through the bar slow collecting eyes following her hips like the ball in a movie sing-a-long. a feathered stole chokes the chill from her throat. she give’em thick lips and long legs curving like a chair leg her laying down red heels like blood puddles. her blue coat won’t hide the bundle of butt she made little effort to conceal, to reveal to the right man but there ain’t none, cause she the kind of woman crooks shy like sticky money, bad getaway cars and White Citizens. Reggie’s eyes try to warn her away before she get to the table, but every look is a come-on a good reason for getting close to somebody. this ain’t no time for social talk, but Charnita ignores all signals and good sense. the others don’t see her till she's too close not to hear their plan. she looks at the table the map of the store. they straighten up. ten eyes work her body from leg to head admiring, desiring, despising the interruption. nothing moves, like the whole room’s holding its breath except for a boa-feather falling through the smoke bout to hit the ground loud as a shoe. Brandon D. Johnson Brandon D. Johnson is author of Love’s Skin, Man Burns Ant, The Strangers Between, and co-author of The Black Rooster Social Inn: This Is The Place. He is published in several journals and anthologies, including Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade and The Listening Ear: Cave Canem Poets Look South, and Beyond the Frontier: African American Poetry for the 21st Century. He is a Cave Canem Graduate Fellow. He was a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Born in Gary, Indiana, he received a BA from Wabash College and his JD from Antioch School of Law. He has also been a photographer for many years. Mr. Johnson lives with his wife and children in Washington, DC. Eighty-year-old Woman Living in Squatter’s Camp, Bakersfield, CA
Her hair has thinned, her round glasses low on her nose. I doubt she has many teeth the way her mouth is set. Yet, she has advice: “If you lose your pluck you lose the most that is in you.” She sits in a car. She is wearing a plaid dress with cuffs and wide collar. I would not want to tangle with her, although the man beside her probably has. He is in her shadow and I didn’t see him at first. I think of a long marriage, that he’s learned to give in. To live on the outskirts of town in a shack of tin. What do the wrinkles in this woman’s face reveal-- the death of a child, illness or the constant counting of change for bread and milk. She has one hand on her forehead shielding her eyes from the sun. She wants to see clearly what is before her. Gail Peck Gail Peck is the author of eight books of poetry. The Braided Light won the Leana Shull Contest for 2015. Poems and essays have appeared in Southern Review, Nimrod, Greensboro Review, Brevity, Connotation Press, Comstock, Stone Voices, and elsewhere. Her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart, and her essay “Child Waiting” was cited as a notable forBest American Essays, 2013. This is Your Game
Describe the painting, you whisper in my ear, without using the words for colour. This is your game. The way you stood with me in Figueres looking at Dali, daring me to describe the persistence of memory without alluding to time. I tell you about the way blood thickens when breath is stolen from it, the way an empty evening coagulates into a lonely night, the way a bruise heals until a faraway memory picks at its scab again. Your eyes become the charcoal residue of a long forgotten passion. This is your game. The way you can bring me a cloud from a burning sky to sing the song of dormant thunder and then shrug. Tell me why you’re happy, you whisper in my ear, tell me without asking about love. Rajani Radhakrishnan "I am from Bangalore, India and post my work on thotpurge.wordpress.com. Some of my poems have recently appeared in online platforms such as The Lake, Quiet Letter, Visual Verse and Parentheses Journal." Imprisoned
Boxed in, his tall frame enflamed and defamed, standing elegantly before the fall, gloves in hand, ready to take on the world at a glance, throwing down the gauntlet, betrayed by his stance, he refused to deny himself, or who he was in all his glory, storied outlandish ways he set himself apart with wit and style to be taken apart when fashion changed without the guile to bite his tongue, betrayed him self when he did not spite the love that dare not speak its name. Betsy Mars Betsy Mars is a poet, educator, mother, animal lover, and travel fanatic who lives in the Los Angeles area. She finds her adrenaline rush in taking new and strange substitute teaching jobs as often as her psyche allows, while trying to maintain the balance she needs to write. Her work has appeared in the California Quarterly, Illya's Honey, and the Rise Up Review, among others. Margaret Eckman
An editor by trade, Margaret Eckman has come to love the rigor poetry demands—telling a complete story, well and beautifully, in a few lines. Her award-winning poems have appeared in Aurorean, Broadkill Review,Corbel Stone Press, Nantucket Magazine, Wild Word, and other publications. Her book Hope Runs Through It (as M. W. MacKay) is a collection of poetry that explores the beauty and mystery of nature, the struggles and hope of spirituality, and the challenges and blessings of raising a child with special needs. numbers letters girls
A to Z and I know nothing 1 to 9 and calculations bore me give me a sleek car two-tone room to roll around in big fins like Elvis' hair a one car parade on main street with an arm around my girl hamburgers on the way to love no deliberations or fussiness ketchup smeared on our lips the night not over the scene is always looking on the scene coats slung over shoulders prepared for anything hamburgers with the works Billy Howell-Sinnard Billy is a hospice case manager, visual artist, and poet. He's had numerous first, second, and third place wins at IBPC (InterBoard Poetry Community). His poem, Hospice Nurse, won second place for poem of the year for 2014-2015. Several of his poems have been published in anthologies and at online poetry sites. Appoggiatura
Swirl, then swallow the seeds – you will grow into grace, la professeur de botanique instructs, anemonae fingers waving towards me, unaware of the juddering waves of heat between my thighs. Her pale hair bleeds into ether as her left hand falls into a mudra of plucking, teases the flower’s fourchette. Her mouth opens in concert with petals wide in brazen exposure on a pedestal that lifts it to her longing. She folds into its heady bouquet. ~ ~ ~ I lock my hands over my pleasure, muffle the larval throb of last night’s pollination, harmonized to my music teacher’s Accent! Attack! – tender, stinging, as he draws his bow strung with his long black hair across my waist, leaves tracks that glow and reflect his ready want. I shed my chiffon carapace, gasp as he whips the spiraled straps from my thighs, tethers his desire to my dreams, plucks my seeds, deposits rosins of greed. Diamonds fly from my mouth. Our tendrils wrap till dawn, tremolos thrumming on – stamen...stigma…. Mikki Aronoff Mikki Aronoff’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Lake, EastLit, Virga, Love’s Executive Order, bosque and Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, and elsewhere. A New Mexico poet, she is also involved in animal advocacy. |
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