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Ekphrastic Christmas Selections: Part Two

1/1/2021

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Picture
A Christmas Carol, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (England) 1867

Editor's Note: This is the second selection of entries for the Christmas Isn't Cancelled ekphrastic prompt collection. The first selection was published on Christmas Day. Click here to read them. The contest winner will be announced and awarded shortly.

**

​The Angel
 
Ellen sighs.  Almost Christmas. Not that she gives a farthing these days! With her sleeves rolled up, she sweats, labouring in a haze of steam; around her scuffed boots, filthy water; her hair hangs limply, like greased string; from the low ceiling, constant drips; slopping around in her sink, the soiled linen of London’s finest. With vigour, she scrubs petticoats, swills cotton, dabs with blue at the city’s grime, stiff within each collar. 
 
Outside, snow swirls and drifts. She needs to get finished; this weather will get worse. Better hurry if she’s to be paid! There’s still wringing and rinsing; still this heap of clothes for the high and mighty: they’ll need them for next week’s swanky soirées. She sighs, loudly this time, trying to forget those few Christmas pasts when the sun seemed to shine out of her backside. 
 
Grabbing her shawl and mittens, she clasps a bucket and heads out into the street. As she goes, she hums The Holly and the Ivy, remembering.
 
*
Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s hand slowly tilts her chin, this way, that way, until he is satisfied. He smooths her wavy hair so that the gilt hairclip is balanced just above her left ear. He whispers to her to open her lips slightly. She laughs. He strokes her mouth into position, instructs her to imagine she is singing something holy, like Hodie Christus natus est.  Ellen pulls a face, bursts out laughing. She tells the artist that she’s never heard of it or that lingo, but would The Holly and the Ivy do?  She belts out the carol before he can stop her. He asks her not to sing but to simply imagine pure, sweet, heavenly music: her lips must remain still. She informs him that it’s a cold March morning not Christmas and if he doesn’t want her teeth chattering, it would help if more coal could kindly be put on the fire. The artist frowns. Ellen sighs. She knows that look by now.  It’s time to do as she’s told: that’s what she’s paid for.  She knows what she owes him: he’s plucked her out of the laundry, given her hope. So, she takes up her position, clutches the strange-looking instrument, moulds her mouth into a chaste, unworldly gawp. She breathes slowly, drifts into a daydream, keeping perfectly still.  Rossetti smiles, paints as she poses, hour after hour.
 
*
Outside, it’s raw; the tips of her chapped fingers feel numb.  Under her hot breath, a stream of oaths as she heaves and cranks the water-pump’s handle, her neck, arms and back aching. She pauses, shrugs, lifts, twists, pulls at her shoulders, then begins pumping again: there’s no time to idle, not like back then.
  
*
Today, she is an angel, singing of the Holy Birth.  She leans against a beautiful flowery wall; she is an angel with a fine clip, studded with pearls, fastened into her auburn hair; around her neck, emeralds; she wears a pretty patterned, satin gown; she plucks the strings of a golden lyre; her eyes are clear blue; her fresh, softly flushed face almost brushes against an icon of the Holy Mother and Child; her gaze is heavenwards.
 
*
Water spills over the bucket’s brim. Ellen is lugging the bucket by the handle towards the yard when her shawl slips onto snow. She curses, pitches the bucket down, grabs the shawl, gives it a shake and brush.  She’s about to wrap it round her head again, when she turns to see a tiny tot, with her gran, peering up at her. Ellen grins. The little one screams. 
 
The old woman drags the child away, scolding her. Ellen watches them go; all the time, her fingers trace the ugly scars criss-crossing her face.
 
She tries not to be, but she is bitter. One minute she’s coining it in, just for sitting around dolly-daydreaming at the ceiling. The next, no artist will look her in the eye, let alone paint her. Who wants the likeness of a smashed pot that’s been stuck back together badly?  And all because some soldier, who fancied his chances and didn’t want other men gawping at her, set to work with a knife! But that was then.This is now. She has shirts and bloomers to attend to.
 
Snow-flakes pirouette across the cobbles. Ellen and her bucket trudge back to the sink.  Down the street, she hears an out-of-tune drunk strangling Hark the Herald.
 
*
The end of another long sitting in his studio. Staring in wonder at Rossetti’s painting, Ellen suddenly senses what he sees in her: she is beautiful; a proper stunner. This painting will be the making of her! There’ll be a queue of gentleman artists begging her to sit. She can put up her prices too. She’ll never have to do a proper day’s work again! Studying her own sweet angelic face, Ellen can’t help smiling.

Dorothy Burrows

Based in the UK, Dorothy Burrows enjoys writing flash fiction, poetry and short plays. Her work has been published online by various websites including The Ekphrastic Review, Words for the Wild, Another North, Failed Haiku, The Poetry Pea and also in Mslexia’s newsletter. The Ekphrastic Review has nominated one of her flash fictions, “Four Horses, Two Friends, One Postcard” for Best Short Fictions 2021. She tweets @rambling_dot

**

​

Picture
Children's Games, by Eitaku (Shutaro) Kobayashi (Japan) 1894

​Winter Spirit
 
a soft white blanket
muffles the valley’s floor as
four wrapped-up youngsters
gaze and giggle at the world’s
sparkle, then they start to play
 
the youngest child pats
snowballs, still happy at the 
bottom of the pile
 
the next in the line,
with little dog on lead, barks
orders at elders
 
second-in-command
shouts back, icily proud, fierce,
fighting for status
 
big brother artist
works, absorbed in creation,
above silly games
 
snow blankets cedars
as children shiver, shaping
their winter spirit:
it appears in laughter but
will leave when the tall trees weep

​Dorothy Burrows

Based in the UK, Dorothy Burrows enjoys writing flash fiction, poetry and short plays. Her work has been published online by various websites including The Ekphrastic Review, Words for the Wild, Another North, Failed Haiku, The Poetry Pea and also in Mslexia’s newsletter. The Ekphrastic Review has nominated one of her flash fictions, “Four Horses, Two Friends, One Postcard” for Best Short Fictions 2021. She tweets @rambling_dot

**

Tanka

the boys used so much
snow to build their ice giant
I was really cross
they barely left me enough
to mould one little rabbit

Sheila Lockhart

Sheila Lockhart is a retired social worker and lives on the Black Isle in the Scottish Highlands. She is a member of Ross-shire Writers and the Moniack Mhor writers’ group and has been published in Northwords Now, Nine Muses Poetry, Twelve Rivers (Suffolk Poetry Society), the StAnza Poetry Map of Scotland, The Writers’ Cafe and the Ekphrastic Review.

​**


Picture
Two Oxen in Winter, by Maud Lewis (Canada) by 1970

Double Yoked 

Holiday fever had us elbow 
To elbow in sweaters two
For one if
You could find the
Same size but then
It didn’t matter really after
Awhile the joy of
Color and pattern eclipsing 
Sense until we
Grabbed the same one at
The same time pulling
Then realizing we were in
The same egg, burning eye to eye for
The other to let go when a
Restock dropped by the
Salesgirl with brighter
Prospects caught your eye and
Opened your hand to seize that 
Purple leopard print from the wild 
Melee instead while I kept clutching that
Yellow buffalo check all the way to
The register.
Strangers still we spotted each other
Again that weekend at a company
Christmas party you in the
Same  careful cashmere as I coloured
Chagrined knowing the secrets of
Each other’s closets and 
The mad whirl
Inside filling them
Still in the same egg.

Kate Bowers

Kate Bowers is a Pittsburgh based writer whose work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Rue Scribe, and Sheila-Na-Gig.

**


Toast on Your Wedding Anniversary

To a couple who’re yoked together 
like two oxen pulling through snow, 

who toil towards progress and plod 
without counting steps or kicking 

each other, who endure obstacles –
eyes like stars, horns top-lit 

and chains adorned with bells.
If I lift off your harness, I sense 

you’d choose to stay together,
your bodies in sturdy balance.

Patient with your lot, you low
and trample hard clods underfoot

searching for the next bellyful. 
You stand out – blue skies or grey.

​Helen Freeman

Helen Freeman started writing poetry during recovery time from a serious road traffic accident in Oman and got hooked. She has been published in several magazines and supplements including with Corbel Stone Press, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Clear Poetry, Algebra of Owls, Ground Poetry, Your One Phone-call, Open Mouse, Red River Review, Barren Magazine, The Drabble, Sukoon, Poems for Ephesians and The Ekphrastic Review. Some of her ekphrastic poems were published alongside related Diane Rendle paintings at an exhibition in Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh. She taught English for many years in Kenya, Tanzania, Oman and Dubai and now lives in Durham, England.

Picture
Saint Nick, by Robert Walter Weir (USA) 1837

The Merry Troll

A merry little troll
droll and demonic
sidesteps the hearth at Christmas
a naughty little heathen is he.

Behooded in a red-and-white cape
smote with ashes and soot
this furtive oddball Sinterklaas
this gnarly grotesque mischief-maker
jests rude gestures with his fingers 
and his nose.

A wicked prankster
a Victorian Grinch
he clambers up the cold stone chimney
and chortles with an ogreish laugh
after snatching gifts and stealing off
with stocking treasures
leaving behind no clementines
only a sour lemon cut in half
and its rind.


A fragile angel in the sack on his back
watches over him through the coal chute
before he scurries away 
to a reindeerless sleigh
snowbanked on Christmas Eve.


Tanya Adèle Koehnke

Tanya Adèle Koehnke is a member of The Ontario Poetry Society (TOPS) and the Scarborough Poetry Club.  Tanya's poems appear in The Ekphrastic Review, The Canvas, Big Arts Book, Canadian Woman Studies, Foreplay:  An Anthology of Word Sonnets, and other publications.  Tanya taught English at several post-secondary institutions in Toronto.  Tanya also has a background in arts journalism.

**
​
Picture
Dreamer of Dreams, by Edmund Dulac (France) 1915

The Ice-Maiden
 
She isn’t all there
her eyes say to us
pity, sadness, shock
shimmering
a pearl and crystal veil 
the white dress drapes 
in the white of perfection
her face, the beauty of rescue
all those broken red hearts she
gathers in the cold blue night
holds cupped in her hands like
a shaman her
attendant white bears
are guardians of heartbreak
as she carries the sadness
with her to warm it at her hearth

Amy Phimister 
 
Amy Phimister is a writer who resides in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.  She is a member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and has been published by WFOP, Yardstick Books and The Ekphrastic Review, and was a finalist for the Hal Prize. She and her cousin have written a children’s book called A-B-C the Animals which will be released by Sand Beach Press in December.
Picture
The Annunciation, by Juan de Flandes (Spain, Flanders) c. 1509-1519

Unprecedented     

I tried my best to be stern, 
even raised a finger at her,
ballooning my wings, 
brandishing my sceptre,

but I tell you my heart 
was racing like a sonic boom. 
My knees crumpled.
My cape flapped about.

I thought she’d never accept 
such a seismic request.     
She just knelt there, lily-white,
allowing the page to turn.

​Helen Freeman

Helen Freeman started writing poetry during recovery time from a serious road traffic accident in Oman and got hooked. She has been published in several magazines and supplements including with Corbel Stone Press, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Clear Poetry, Algebra of Owls, Ground Poetry, Your One Phone-call, Open Mouse, Red River Review, Barren Magazine, The Drabble, Sukoon, Poems for Ephesians and The Ekphrastic Review. Some of her ekphrastic poems were published alongside related Diane Rendle paintings at an exhibition in Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh. She taught English for many years in Kenya, Tanzania, Oman and Dubai and now lives in Durham, England.

​
Picture
Gray Tree, by Piet Mondrian (Netherlands) 1911

Lone Oak in December

Stark bleak tree 
cobwebbed with spidery branches
mazed in battleship grey
how majestic and desolate you are.

When soft white flakes 
dance upon your outstretched rickety limbs
your spindly tenacious beauty sparkles
as though captured in a snow globe.

A crystal city in winter mauve 
is the backdrop for your being
your trunk bends to support your fragile weight
that has toiled through the seasons.

How you pine to find your roots
like the ones in a family tree
but what is the genealogy of a lonely individual
with no ties to ground them?

Shake 
and the snow falls all around you
Oh, beautiful grey tree.


Tanya Adèle Koehnke

Tanya Adèle Koehnke is a member of The Ontario Poetry Society (TOPS) and the Scarborough Poetry Club.  Tanya's poems appear in The Ekphrastic Review, The Canvas, Big Arts Book, Canadian Woman Studies, Foreplay:  An Anthology of Word Sonnets, and other publications.  Tanya taught English at several post-secondary institutions in Toronto.  Tanya also has a background in arts journalism.

Picture
Massacre of the Innocents, by Léon Cogniet (France) 1824

When Will the Counting Stop?

She harvested figs, counting them into baskets and counted days waiting for a baby. Some months one came and left before she could count breaths. So she tended trees. 

Finally, a son. All year she counted feeds, smiles, words, steps. She counted paces round Bethlehem – her lovely town, until suddenly it wasn’t. 

See her cower – bullet eyes, arms glued, bare feet kicking, cornered by bulls ripping her apart? She’s glaring at us, petrified by our choices, the weapons we wield, the boots we’ve donned. She’s still counting other mothers all around the world cradling doomed children, running for their lives.

Helen Freeman

​Helen Freeman started writing poetry during recovery time from a serious road traffic accident in Oman and got hooked. She has been published in several magazines and supplements including with Corbel Stone Press, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Clear Poetry, Algebra of Owls, Ground Poetry, Your One Phone-call, Open Mouse, Red River Review, Barren Magazine, The Drabble, Sukoon, Poems for Ephesians and The Ekphrastic Review. Some of her ekphrastic poems were published alongside related Diane Rendle paintings at an exhibition in Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh. She taught English for many years in Kenya, Tanzania, Oman and Dubai and now lives in Durham, England.
Picture
The Nativity, by Edwin Reginald Framptom (Britain) by 1923

Angels

The sky was midnight-blue, just a few 
pale stars to guide the flocks, 
all the rest darkness. A dull clatter 
of sheep bells in the hills. 

Then 
the almighty flash above our heads. 
Words were spoken or maybe sung.
We had to screw our eyes
against the brightness.

Angels? Heavenly host? 
They looked more like ghosts, 
long thin substance-less things, 
no wings, pale faces, arms and legs, 
like crucified boys hanging there   
in the midnight sky. 

But beneath their feet 
the frozen earth blossomed, 
primroses, crocuses, violets, 
the flowers of Spring.

Sheila Lockhart

Sheila Lockhart is a retired social worker and lives on the Black Isle in the Scottish Highlands. She is a member of Ross-shire Writers and the Moniack Mhor writers’ group and has been published in Northwords Now, Nine Muses Poetry, Twelve Rivers (Suffolk Poetry Society), the StAnza Poetry Map of Scotland, The Writers’ Cafe and the Ekphrastic Review.
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