A Jewish Giant at Home with His Parents in the Bronx, NY, 1970 "There were giants in the earth in those days…" Genesis 6:4 He looms, their darling boy, above the two of them, his head and shoulders Atlas-shrugged, as if to keep from crashing down upon them all the cracked and dingy plaster of their ceilinged world. Mother stares in wonder up at him, like a woman heavy with reluctant child, her hands pressed sure and solid against her lower back. Father stands beside her, his fingers knuckle-deep inside the pockets of his coat, a look of benign acceptance on his face. They seem a diligent pair: lamps swaddled, still, in the protective cellophane they bought them in. Fringed slipcovers safeguarding the sofa and the chair. Yet here he stands, this quasi-Quasimodo of their only son. Dark shock of tousled curls. Shoes like burnished boxcars. Fingers gripping the sturdy crook of cane that holds him now aloft. To her he is the babe she once knitted booties for. To him, the tyke he steadied down the sidewalk on his bike. Sweet Goliath of their hearts, they do not know in two short years he will have grown himself to death, that the tumor sent soaring by some truant gland inside his brain will too late be found a cure. A stone’s throw away from ridding the earth forever of his kind. Untitled (6) 1970-71 Your camera does not say retarded, slow. Rogue or truant chromosome. Says only three young girls on a grassy lawn, backed by the treed horizon. Their happiness obscures thick tongues and heavy lidded eyes as one stares down in awe, the other’s head flung back in sudden glee. At their feet lies an unwrapped gift, or perhaps a modest lunch someone has packed for them. “Give me a pose,” you must have said as their friend pressed palms and soles into the earth and thrust her calico clad rump toward the sky. Soon you will choose for them a place on the wall of a gallery amidst an array of stars and royalty. Young Brooklyn Family Going for a Sunday Outing, 1966 She seems the perfect cross between Boy George and Elizabeth Taylor. He, James Dean and Robert Blake (You, at that time, of course, could not have made the connection). It’s spring. Or maybe early fall. She is sleeveless, a leopard coat draped just- in-case across one arm, black strap of a purse woven into the warp of her slender fingers. She, too, carries a camera and a bundled baby girl to complete her load. But it must have been their boy that drew you to them, left hand grasped tight inside James/Robert’s right, the pain-crossed eye, Munch-like cave of mouth, free hand a desperate clutch at his small crotch. Only you must know, as your shutter clicks, how bad he has to go. A Young Man in Curlers at Home on West 20th Street, NYC, 1966 Faggot. Noun. Bundle of sticks bound togeth- er as fuel. Pejorative for ho- mosexual, allusion to the pyre of brittle twigs over which one’s body in by-gone times might have been set aflame. Fag. Slang for cigarette, the soft glow of its dying ember. Why, when I gaze up- on the lovely symmetry of his face, cigarette held elegant between the manicured shimmer of his fingertips, are these the thoughts that assail the ety- mology-obsessed synapses of my aberrant mind? What I really want to say is this: His mouth is a valentine. Cathy Smith Bowers Cathy Smith Bowers is a former Poet-Laureate of North Carolina. Her work has appeared in many journals including The Atlantic, The Georgia Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Kenyon Review, and The Gettysburg Review. Her first book, The Love That Ended Yesterday in Texas, was the inaugural winner of The Texas Tech University Press First Book Competition. Her poems have been featured on Garrison Keillor’s Poetry Almanac and on Poetry Daily. Her fifth book, The Collected Poems of Cathy Smith Bowers, Press 53, won the 2014 SIBA Award for Poetry. Her most recent book is The Abiding Image: Inspiration and Guidance for Beginning Writers, Readers, and Teachers of Poetry, Press 53, 2021.
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This was a wonderful contest with Alexis Rhone Fancher as our guest judge. The intriguing selection of artworks on a broad range of themes on human sexuality inspired some fascinating literature. Thank you to all who entered. When Memory Becomes Art My aunt was an artist. She painted still life using color, shade, and contrast. Sometimes a rolling landscape, impressionistic portraits of her children in watercolour, acrylic or oil. She attended art classes all her life and was hard on herself, never acknowledging her talent. She kept her collection, not selling paintings or even giving them away. In her late 80s, she painted a vision from her childhood. It was a glimpse of a moment in time when her older brother played the tuba in the high school marching band. Although the hues were muted browns, grays, and greens, her brother holding his instrument of gold, dressed in a bright white uniform with red stripes, was the central focus. Painted details revealed the form of a neighbor who lived in an adjoining apartment, inquiring if the family had pet seals. What were those strange sounds she had heard bellowing late at night through the common walls? A recollection, like a dream of so long ago, my aunt had expressed in shapes, words, and coluor on canvas. She carried the painting to her brother at his assisted living residence. He had recently celebrated his 90th birthday. Brother and sister. A shared history of parents, childhood, and entangled bonds of a lifetime. Holding her breath, she held up the painting to give him a closer view. She was blinking back tears of love and anticipation, hoping they would exchange knowing looks, smiles, and laughter, recalling a humorous event. His face was without expression. After the visit, my aunt tucked her memory back into the large plastic bag. Her footsteps on the linoleum floor echoed in the hallway as she returned from the building to her car and placed the package on the backseat. ** My aunt will decide to wrap up the painting of that childhood experience in heavy brown paper and deliver it to the post office where it will be labeled fragile. The night before, she will write an explanation describing everything held in her heart about the incident, inspiring her artwork. I will receive a large package, an unexpected gift. I will be surprised and delighted to read how proud she was of her big brother in her heartwarming missive and discover a painting of my young Dad as a high school tuba player. Lois Perch Villemaire Lois Perch Villemaire resides in Annapolis, MD. Her stories, memoir flash, and poetry have been published in such places as Potato Soup Journal, Six Sentences, Trouvaille Review, FewerThan500, The Drabble, Pen In Hand, North of Oxford, Flash Frontier, and Flora Fiction. Her poems have been included in several anthologies published by Truth Serum Press and American Writers Review 2021. She was a finalist in the 2021 Prime Number Magazine Award for Poetry. Dear Ekphrastic Family,
Just an update on my knee surgery recovery. It is going slowly and I am still having a lot of trouble with pain and walking. I'm busy with the hard work of recovery protocols. Thank you for all your well wishes. Each day is better, but barely, than the one before. I am in okay spirits, which is a big positive change over last week! I am working, but at about 20% my usual capacity. It is painful to sit at a desk too long and hard to focus. I am grateful for the tasks of the journal, which I love with all my heart, but please be patient as I fall behind emails, submissions, posts, etc. I will get caught up in time and just beg your indulgence while things go slowly. Onwards and upwards! love, Lorette The Power of Red Cinnabar so like cinnamon in name, exotic in nature, toxic mercury at its heart. The Romans knew its vermilion power; Titian clothed his figures in its deep red. Ground to powder, its flame illuminated manuscripts, monks’ records of godly faith. Now a modern master deepens the storm flood he creates, a flurry of competing angles, lines, curves and yellowed space, stamped with carmine edge. So many people sucked into the maelstrom of war, each generation unforgiving, intractable, swallowed in a whirlpool of hate, bloodied eyes, blood-red. Sue Wallace-Shaddad Sue Wallace-Shaddad has an MA in Writing Poetry from Newcastle University/Poetry School London. Her short collection A City Waking Up was published by Dempsey and Windle October 2020. Sue was highly commended in the Plough Prize, 2021 and has many poems published online and in anthologies. Sue writes poetry reviews and is Secretary of Suffolk Poetry Society. https://suewallaceshaddad.wordpress.com/ Icarus Boy Coming down was easy. The tricky bit was taking off; the cusps heavy as a rucksack on his back, his heart tilting an uncertain beat against the ramshackle nest of wax and feathers. His weight shifting into the wind as he ran, fast as he could, to catch a sudden gust. Now he's shooting up there, wired to his wings, hot-railing through the clouds. He's mastered the skill of turning on a thermal, soars above fields of corn and shining wheat. Perhaps that sudden pull between his shoulderblades reminds him to turn and see how far he's travelled. But he's much too high, and sparkling sundogs beckon, the fire in his veins buzzing like a quasar, the plume of a jet scored in the air below him. Here he can wring the universe out, a dishcloth in his fingers. He can skim the lines of isobars, taste the spike of light across his tongue. Too heavy for the cumulus to hold, too close to that ecstasy of heat and plasma. Unloosed, he tumbles back to earth, starfish arms spread wide like a crucifixion. Oystercatchers startle as he lands in the sea, steam rising as he hits the cooling surf. An early moon quickens the evening sky. Sprawls his shadow across the waves, long, black, a broken albatross. Kathy Miles Kathy Miles is a poet and short story writer from West Wales. Her work has appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, and she is a previous winner of The Bridport Prize. Her fourth full poetry collection, Bone House, was published by Indigo Dreams in 2020, and she is a frequent reader and workshop facilitator at various venues throughout the UK. A Letter from Worpswede, February 1905 Milly, if I had made three good paintings in my life I could die now. But I haven’t made one. In two days I’ll be twenty-nine. Dear sister, how good you are to believe in me, or want to, even in this dull time when I have no proof of any becoming, except what the family calls my arrogance. I avoid the studio now, eight years of oils and sketches stacked against the walls. Study the masters, Father said, meaning you will never be one, meaning revere technique to learn some humility. Otto tells me: learn to draw. I want to say Otto look at your hand, do you see lines around it? If I have masters, they are not the great Germans anymore. I’d go back to those ancient anonymous makers of the unforgettable dark eyes awaiting eternity. Or follow Cezanne who alone sees that color is truth and that’s what painters are for. Why, to be, must I be willing to be unkind? Well I must be, and I am willing. Oh Milly, I’ll be all right. I get like this in February when spring and Paris are too far off and my brushes turn stiff while I sit on the opposite end of the couch reading in French and Otto makes entries in his notebook entitled “Ideals” and had no idea yet of my travel plans. I want to be equally unaware of the way he turns his pipe to the side to see the page, how he turns out studies day after day and will overpaint, not realizing the studies themselves are lovelier than anything that buys us food. If only the sun would come out, I’d insist on a skating tour in the bright cold. You see? It’s only my old winter mood. ** This poem was previously published in the anthology Sister Stew: Poetry and Fiction by Women, Bamboo Ridge Press, 1991. ** Becoming Something (Letter to Otto Modersohn) How I loved you, Dear Red. Don’t send my own letters as proof. I called you my King. I gave you my whole round soul but I need it back. If you want me to write to you now it must be about art. I don’t even know how to sign this letter. No longer Modersohn. Not Becker either. I’m nothing until I create colours as dazzling as skin in sunlight, a pious nude from the concave side. I have begun. I once was a little green kite you flew on the moor. Unused to thin air I bobbled and trembled at first, kept dipping back down toward the birches, the small black sails of Worpswede. But I’m finished with brooding. My colours change in this atmosphere. A yellow coltsfoot held toward the sun gives off its own light. I’m soaring again Red Beard, this time with no string. I see you now only because I know you are there. But I can see Paris, the world, from here. Infant Nursing: Sketch by Paula Becker, 1902 Not beautiful this baby, but intent on satisfaction. In the centre of this portrait his lower lip protrudes, its wet inner rim supporting the nipple pulled and elongated by his tongue. Eyes and mind are shut. He is his mouth and all that milk is becoming him. The strongest lines form contours of his head, his cheek, her breast, his lips, her lips. His infancy is round. Maternity is round. Her tender concentration, one arm cradling the surprising heaviness of his head. Like him she will not move until he’s had enough. She strokes his cheek with her rough thumb. ** This poem was previously published in Virginia Quarterly Review Autumn 1989. Young Girl with Flower Vases No one will tell this girl to put others first or give her words to be read in silence. No one will cover her up when her father enters the room. Clothes for her will be merely ceremonial ribbons for the soul. This is no child to play with. Consult her about grave things: how long you may have left and whether your father ever will acknowledge you. She’ll respond in a yellow-petalled whisper and can no more be wrong than sun can on the roof or some leaf we can’t identify. ** “Young Girl with Flower Vases” was previously published in the anthology Sister Stew: Poetry and Fiction by Women, Bamboo Ridge Press, 1991. Self Portrait with Hand on Chin, 1906/07 I catch these eyelids under putty brows with seven strokes of dusky flamingo, sunset yellow rose. Her eyes, though they have lost their curiosity to a sort of chalky needlessness, keep gazing after something on my right. I try moving so that something will be me-- farther and farther over, following, until I’m even with the edge. They look still farther. At last she is simply unaware of me. What is that look? Something rising wonderfully open-eyed but without urgency, with hushed authority, as if from Egyptian tombs. Already settling into a thick and thickening yellow-green, her lips are slightly pulled apart by her own fingers before they close again and she begins to hum from everywhere, a living stone. Sue Cowing Sue Cowing lives in Honolulu where she taught history and Asian Studies for sixteen years before leaving teaching to write. She has an MFA–in-Writing from Vermont College, and has published poems in numerous journals and anthologies including Virginia Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, and The Denny Poems. Her books include Fire In The Sea: An Anthology of Poetry and Art (University of Hawai‘i Press); My Dog Has Flies: Poetry for Hawai‘i’s Kids (BeachHouse Publishing); a novel, You Will Call Me Drog (Carolrhoda Books and Usborne UK); and The Octopus of Imagination, a chapbook of her poems self-published during COVID shutdown. The scheduled Sunday session for ekphrastic writing will continue as planned at 2 pm to 4 pm on Sunday December 12. A small group so join us for an intimate and informal opportunity to learn and write together. For those who aren't aware, I had knee surgery recently and was expecting to be in decent shape by this date. Things are moving much slower than I'd like and remain quite painful, but I'm so glad I can still do some of the things I love, like sharing amazing paintings with you and interesting creative writing prompts. Our Sunday sessions are always great discussions and generate amazing sparks and poems and stories. Try one! Join us if you are free.
Transcendental Beaks On a strained jog around the corner when the flesh is crunched, my pocket spasms, foams. It is the constant coffin-needling. I am one of the coffin’s nails. Instantly the pitched gush runs smack in the center of my vision, trampling all in. I feel abandoned and sighing tattoos ribboning around me, worms in ephemeral glue that cascade when their trickles are rushed by the burn. I sense I should melt to escape down through all sorrow and then deeper until I am drawn to fan out and split low into a hollow, roll over the mildew of a meadow. It seems strained, difficult to squeeze. Out there in the weeds shriek beaks, yet none of those beaks is telling. They could tell everything. They could coil the cushioned smoke. They play the hinge for the whole mission. Everything contorts to them. Draws on them. Seeds them…. D. R. James D. R. James’s latest of ten collections are Mobius Trip and Flip Requiem (Dos Madres Press, 2021, 2020); his micro-chapbook All Her Jazz is free, fun, and printable-for-folding at Origami Poems Project; and individual poems have appeared in a wide variety of anthologies and journals. He lives in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan. https://www.amazon.com/author/drjamesauthorpage The new ekphrastic prompt is up!
Click here to get all the details and rules, or click on the image above. What flash and poetry will this winter scene inspire in you? |
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Tickled Pink Contest
April 2024
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