the differences subtle how to gauge darkness? little separation between what is and what could be or from what is outside, where there is no promise of light, the darkness expanding, nothing excluded, leaving us companions in this future: everything is darkness Ken Gierke Ken Gierke is a retired truck driver who enjoys kayaking and photography, but writing poetry brings him the most satisfaction. Primarily free verse and haiku, his poetry has appeared at The Ekphrastic Review, Amethyst Review, Vita Brevis, and Eunoia Review, as well as at Tuck Magazine, and can be seen on his blog: https://rivrvlogr.wordpress.com. ** Memories and Rothko’s Black and Red The Rothko Black on Red, 1957 invites me to free associate. I have no direct connection with this untitled painting, but I’m hooked on it. It invites Stendhal and also connects me somehow with my Latvian piano student and the Latvian composer I met in New York who played the flute - yes, his name returns: it was Arnold. We performed works together at the tiny Music Settlement School at which I taught for seven years. Where have those Latvian melodies gone? Do they linger still, echoing from the walls of the small performance hall the school contained. Its little stage, two steps up may not have had a window opening onto the back street, (it’s unlikely a stage would have a window) but that back street was important. The wealthy of the neighborhood lived along the front street, hard-working Chinese and Spanish immigrants lived on the back street. The poor were welcomed as heartily by our music director as the well-to-do. I remember how one Suzi W. developed as a violinist, ultimately inheriting the director’s European-made violin. I met the student later, an adult, performing in an ensemble on a more elegant stage in NYC, having achieved, having endured the demanding and screaming lessons the director gave. But here are those children, some grappling with their instruments more eagerly than others; often, the “privileged” discarding the privilege and demands of performance more quickly than the back-street-kids, all eager and pounding at their drums, often expressing their delights in raw form. So here, then, is the red and the black, or the black on red as Rothko would have it. The contrasts, the struggles, the attaining. The drama of Rothko’s works is transferred into my personal memory canvas. I don’t know how that transfer occurred, but now i feel more closely linked to this work; I have delved into my past, that past with its dramatic musical explosions and explorations, both my own, and those that occurred within the young children. “True drama is a narrative structure involving the reversal of fortune, or at least some sense that this reversal has happened or can happen, and though drama is possible in an abstract painting, it requires specific elements.” Thus wrote a reviewer of Rothko’s work. I sense the reversal, the possibility that things can go either way, toward healthy development, perhaps, or toward cowardly refusal. It’s all there in his canvas. Carole Mertz Carole Mertz studied music at Oberlin College in Ohio, in New York, and in Salzburg, Austria. She taught music throughout her thirty plus years in New York City. She publishes bits of memoir on various online sites and enjoys visiting the ekphrastic review for its ongoing challenges and stimuli. Her first poetry collection Toward a Peeping Sunrise is forthcoming from Prolific Press in October. It includes one ekphrasis on Renoir. ** Pondering Rothko During Acupuncture I lie still under the needles, a motionless hour of subtraction, my body drifting free from pain. The surprise of two black rectangles, islands in a sea of red, stretches my mind’s tableau: Rothko’s Black on Red. I once sought solace from deep angst in Houston’s Rothko Chapel. His late '60s paintings starkly black. Only whispers of green and maroon. He took himself out of the world before they were hung. Though Black on Red, painted in 1957, still vibrates with lifeblood. These needles cannot pulse the chi, an energy to illuminate this man’s visions, his early life in Russia, a displaced person in New York. Did he feel he had lost a mother tongue, a country? Did the slow drain of bright colours, finally red, from his canvases—the dominance of black— paint him into grief’s clutches? An abyss the only option? Sandi Stromberg Sandi Stromberg served ten years on the board of Mutabilis Press, a Houston-based press dedicated to serving the poetry community in the region. She was guest editor of its anthology, Untameable City: Poems on the Nature of Houston, which the Houston Chronicle recommended in 2017 as one of 10 best books about the city. ** Black and Red If twice qualifies as warning in a wind of wings blackbirds do not like competition when you walk along reeds in a red sweater. The dulled black of a steam engine as the sun sets over the Sangre de Cristo range is illuminated as if an annunciation. In the marsh, holly blanketed by berries is strung with seaweed that dried in branches after the storm of my youth. A cardinal calls. A cardinal calls. Kyle Laws Kyle Laws is based out of the Arts Alliance Studios Community in Pueblo, CO where she directs Line/Circle: Women Poets in Performance. Her collections include Ride the Pink Horse (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019), Faces of Fishing Creek (Middle Creek Publishing, 2018), This Town: Poem of Correspondence with Jared Smith (Liquid Light Press, 2017), So Bright to Blind (Five Oaks Press, 2015), and Wildwood (Lummox Press, 2014). With six nominations for a Pushcart Prize, her poems and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and France. Granted residencies in poetry from the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), she is one of eight members of the Boiler House Poets who perform and study at the museum. She is the editor and publisher of Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press. ** Untitled They say it isn't art. They say it's too simple, even a child could do such work. I look at the squares, contemplate their meaning, the way they juxtapose, the way the colors complement yet contrast, then ask them without scorn, "Tell me, what to you is art?" Then without hesitation say, "the tragedy of love", watch the colours run. Dan Franch An American abroad, Dan left his hometown near Chicago in 1994 and has since lived in five different countries. His poems and other writings have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Luxembourg Times, Issa's Tidy Hut, Jerry Jazz Musician, CLEW, and Verse-Virtual. ** atomz this red window frame exposes a living room to breathless night visions horrific absence lurks beyond these panes stuffed full with colourless fields outside we evaporate in the end countless atoms prove we're not alone Jordan Trethewey Jordan Trethewey is a writer and editor living in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. Some of his work found a home here, and in other online and print publications such as Burning House Press, Visual Verse, CarpeArte Journal and Califragile. His poetry has also been translated in Vietnamese and Farsi. To see more of his work go to: https://jordantretheweywriter.wordpress.com ** Two Booths, Red Floor Back booth, three share a dark square bordered by red floor heads blurred at the top. The man had asked her and her mother a question. Front booth, the owner calculates busily on a keypad blue dots of gas meekly lighting his table. His one hand punches numbers. His other stretches across a pinch of red floor by rote refilling their glasses. No one comes or goes. What was the question? she asks. Are you lonely? he repeats as if tired. They hold onto their dark places. Janice Bethany Janice Bethany a part-time professor in Houston, Texas, who recently published in The Ekphrastic Review. ** Rothko “Untitled” – an invitation to share, collaborate, decide what this art means, how it feels – at least on this day – at least to you. Or maybe a dare. It worked. You stopped – not like a typical Don’t Get It rushing by, afraid of any syncopation in the status quo. Wrap yourself in hot red. Shiver against blue prickles. Are you afraid to face what lurks in the dark or ready to throw open the window? Perhaps the blurred edges remind you of your fading life. Still confused? Don’t worry. Something has shifted. You’ve begun to talk back. 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. ** Soot & Ashes He rose from the fog of childhood – out of the time of ashes. It was thought he brought “good luck” to every house, without malice or favour. Each time, his arrival would ring through the building. Dressed all in black from top hat to shoes, to the wire brushes slung over his shoulders, his face rimmed in coal dust smudged by his work, always, his teeth and eyeballs a gleaming chalk-white. Chalk-white like his signature on the bottom step of the house: the date, his initials and the simple sketch of a ladder – its chalk luminous. * How memory waylays me in front of this painting. Tall like a man, wide like two, its commanding red rectangle both avian and ecclesiastical red. Looking closely, I stumble over two rectangles, soot-black, softly scrumbled, spontaneous, yet tentative as they try to cover up an earlier blue – almost, but not quite – hope glimpsed, but not trusted. Right there, you can see the brush break off like an unfinished thought, start again, less convinced this time, blue hope shrinks to the margins, and ashes spread. Barbara Ponomareff Barbara Ponomareff lives in southern Ontario, Canada. By profession a child psychotherapist, she has been delighted to pursue her life-long interest in literature, psychology and art since her retirement. The first of her two published novellas dealt with a possible life of the painter J.S. Chardin. Her short stories, memoirs and poetry have appeared in various literary magazines and anthologies. At present, she is translating modern German poetry. ** so light the match tonight there will be no rest not while black knots sink into my core you i i you in the end where there is only oblivion in the end where i become death where i trap you under my soot-sullied boots where the only word i breathe is blaze within the fire within the fire to start again within the fire within the fire Tiffany Shaw-Diaz Tiffany Shaw-Diaz is an award-winning poet and visual artist who lives in Centerville, Ohio. You can learn more about her via: www.tiffanyshawdiaz.com. ** August When summer day temps hit the red zone, my head buckles over under blocks of deep depression. Dark pain wreaks havoc with nerves, sinus, stomach, roiling my whole system with regret for having stepped outside. Once, once only did August heat presage joy, the day our daughter entered the world. Red hot the day, deep the pain; that joy sustains me. Joan Leotta Joan Leotta is a writer and story performer. When she is not sharing stories on page and stage, you can find her at the beach looking for shells. She loves putting words to art and has written often for The Ekphrastic Review, Visual Verse and other ekphrastic-oriented journals and contests. ** Inches Away Stand eighteen inches away — it’s not about the colour, colour’s merely an instrument, it’s about the experience. Mark Rothko created in large format to engulf, astonish the viewer. Transcendent in nature, his work expresses human emotion — Joy. Struggle. Ruin. — where layers of paint evoke the unknown, invite intimacy, as broken and sweeping strokes build surface rhythm. Like prayer, focus can open pathways to sacredness. There’s devotion in examination, reverence in awareness — to observe a rose, study its crimson-depths, to hold the soil of ebony-earth, inhale its bounty, to honour my dad’s words — Smell the dirt! It’s about the experience — to feel, be in the moment, to be inches or centimeters away — to immerse oneself, to Take it. All. In. Jeannie E. Roberts Jeannie E. Roberts has authored six books, including The Wingspan of Things (Dancing Girl Press, 2017), Romp and Ceremony (Finishing Line Press, 2017), Beyond Bulrush (Lit Fest Press, 2015), and Nature of it All (Finishing Line Press, 2013). She is also author and illustrator of Rhyme the Roost! A Collection of Poems and Paintings for Children (Daffydowndilly Press, an imprint of Kelsay Books, 2019) and Let's Make Faces! (author-published, 2009). Her work appears in print and online in North American and international journals and anthologies. She holds a B.S. in secondary education, an M.A. in arts and cultural management, and is Poetry Editor of the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs. When she’s not reading, writing, or editing, you can find her drawing and painting, or outdoors photographing her natural surroundings. ** Through the Window Of the moon rising in darkness, of the un seen but felt-- of the turning that waits and gradually dies-- Of shadows scattered by the sun, hidden by the day and yet lingering behind the veil--quiet, a ghost Of sleepless ness and borders that remain un crossed, and un crossable—of the sudden stillness falling through-- Of blood drawn unwillingly—spilled and taken away—lines disintegrating, empty-- the vast other side Kerfe Roig Kerfe Roig: "Mark Rothko is a painter of portals. Ekphrastic poetry explores the places between image and words in a similar way, as I try to do in relating my image art to my word art, often using the work of others as inspiration. You can see more of my explorations at my website http://kerferoig.com/ and on my blogs https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/ (which I do with my friend Nina) and https://kblog.blog/" ** Wednesdays in New York City A Wednesday. It had to be a Wednesday summer in New York City sun bright, nimbus dark fierce wind then calm endless desert to multiform furtive heart, cleansed soul fearful smile alongside tears no laughter, not here. Red Admiral on rose petals scarlet rims to black foreground en route to stinging nettles another chapter, a bossa nova massed ovum under leaves free day on the horizon it had to be a Wednesday late February 1970. A Wednesday. 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.
5 Comments
Carole Mertz
8/16/2019 08:43:29 am
Kyle Laws, it's beautiful the way you put us there into the scene viewing the Sangre de Christo range. I like the surprise of the 9th line, and then the repeat calls of the cardinal. We are hearing and seeing the red and the black. I want to learn more about the work you do.
Reply
8/17/2019 09:14:30 am
Carole, thank you so much for your comments! So specific! I post links to a lot of my work on Facebook. Recently, I have made them public, but before... I have two books out in the last year: Ride the Pink Horse from Stubborn Mule Press and Faces of Fishing Creek from Middle Creek Publishing, available from both the presses and Amazon. Both of those books have an ekphrastic bent, but responding to literature. Links to collections before that are on my website. Send me a friend request if you're on Facebook.
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Janette Schafer
8/21/2019 08:50:08 am
So many great poems with this deceptively simple selection of artwork. Kerfe’s poem deeply resonated with me this morning and I know I’ll carry these words through my day.
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8/31/2020 07:27:28 pm
I found this magazine thanks to Sandi Stromberg whose poignant poem is featured here, one for which she was nominated "Best of the Net." Kudos, Sandi! & Congratulations to the editors of this lit mag. It's good to see you here with such excellent contributions to the literary arts!
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Sandi Stromberg
9/22/2022 01:23:47 pm
Thanks d. ~~ I'm just seeing this comment and greatly appreciate it! Since you wrote, it, our paths have begun to cross in the most suprising ways!
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