 Ninos, by Fidelio Ponce de Leon (Cuba) 1939. Brushstrokes For Alfredo Fuentes Pons The niños play in the dark, singing mañanitas or humming. The earth’s colours are young again in their faces. Because reality obscures, the Modigliani in you—the face’s contoured symmetry in Hombre religioso—must belong to another painter. That face, native only to dreams, is recognizable—the work of Fidelio, unreal. These children belong to Alfredo, the echoes of clouds made into bonnets, the dog unseeable almost in the bramble, and the artist, barely in their line of sight, painting, finally, an invented name. Gabriel Antonio Reed Gabriel Antonio Reed is an emerging writer from East Tennessee. (The word emerging is a euphemism forunknown.) He is grateful for this opportunity. ** Lot's Wife I turn around and around avoiding the challenge to imitate Lot's wife, frozen in time. I am made of breath and humanity. Ignoring the distractions and the echos of the Pillar of Salt. I move forward with the blessings of the here and now. I am guided by space and freedom and the knowledge that calls me home. Sandy Rochelle Sandy Rochelle is an award winning poet-actress and filmmaker. She appeared on Broadway with The Acting Company of Lincoln Center. Publications include: Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press/Formidable Woman, Writing in a Woman's Voice, Connecticut River Review, Visions International, Tuck. http://sandyrochelle.com ** Metta (for Tricia Knoll) Sit Metta for yourself, and you will find them-- the beggar children of your soul, hands outstretched, so hungry. Won’t you spare them even a crumb? But no—like a maître d'hôtel shooing away a bum, you move them along before you can hear their com- plaints. Why so fearful? Perhaps they’d be half as wretched with only a kind word. Or you could make them at home. After all, you already cohabit. You might as well be touched. Devon Balwit Devon Balwit: "Sit in a comfortable posture in a quiet room or any other place providing privacy and relative silence," says the meditation manual. Devon Balwit replies: "As if..." ** Nemeses They arrive in shroud robes. Say not enough snow. Say tide is rising. Say we know what you’ve done-- your footprints all over this canvas. How could you? Matthew Murrey Murrey's poems have appeared in many journals such as Prairie Schooner, Poetry East, and Under a Warm Green Linden. He received an NEA Fellowship in Poetry a number of years ago, and his first book manuscript, Bulletproof, selected by Marilyn Nelson, was published in February 2019 by Jacar Press. He is a high school librarian in Urbana, Illinois where he lives with his partner. They have two adult sons. His website is at https://www.matthewmurrey.net/ ** The Hand Behind the Easel I created you, my children, cotton smocks swirling in shadows like billowing sails blown to edge of Havana headland consigned to walk through dune and dust, charcoal eyes enticed by the hand behind the easel as if with a puff and sweep of chalky line I could disperse your floating ghosts like dandelion clocks released from time, allow you to walk from frame, escape the shameful sickness of this nation. Kate Young Kate Young lives in Kent with her husband and has been passionate about poetry and literature since childhood. After retiring, she has returned to writing and has had success with poems published in Great Britain and internationally. She is presently editing her work for an anthology and enjoying responding to ekphrastic challenges. Alongside poetry, Kate enjoys art, dance and playing her growing collection of guitars and ukuleles! ** Millstone Not sun-hats, but scarves, wound tight, choking. I see their shadowed faces, pinched lips, hawk noses and black eyes full of woe – the girls, not the mutt. But the mutt too. Mama buttoned on yesterday’s gowns and a cape for little Brunilda that billows and rips on the brambles – sinuous as snakes – framing their way. Even the spindly trunks to their left, the dim house, the distant town are storm- smudged and cumbrous. The sisters clinch fists. No-one chats. No-one giggles or jokes. No-one airs a sound. Only the wind. They should be playing jacks and hopscotch or tag-games of wolf and lambs. I want to see smiles and lithe limbs, clip orchids in their hair, hear chants, but I suspect their stomachs are knotted like ribbons. At home Mama and baby Marco share plantains from the grill. Not much else. There’s no rum left, no churros, just aches. Later Papa will bring home his strike placards instead of pay, his hands free from soil and tobacco stains this year. The livid slogans and plummeting graph-lines frighten the girls, as rain spews and childhood blurs to a sorrel haze. Helen Freeman Helen has been published in several online 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 and Sukoon. She lives in both Riyadh and Edinburgh. ** Ninos Children of Cuba in sepia, white, and black. Beneath the surface: undercurrents, long shadows, effervescence, and storm clouds. John P. Tretbar John P. Tretbar is a retired journalist living in St. Joseph, Missouri with his wife and cat. That makes poetry his #3 passion. He hosts a local poetry klatch and enjoys fostering young talent. He is also a noted musician and actor, with credits from Denver to Chicago. ** Children In Sepia What I remember is brittle and dry the colour of last year’s fallen leaves crumbling into earth- a faint whisper of summer’s joyous shout kicked up as dust with every step These ghosts of a lost season like faces caught in old photographs faded and bodiless haunt me in daylight or darkness our faces older than our years so used to hard conclusions Fists raining down with a man’s strength curses worse than blows eating our hearts leaving us light and dry hollow as fallen leaves brown shadows like smudges on even the brightest day Mary McCarthy Mary McCarthy has always been a writer but spent most of her working life as a Registered Nurse. Her work has appeared in many online and print journals, and she has an electronic chapbook, “Things I Was Told Not to Think About,” available as a free download from Praxis magazine. ** Children of Dis
Not three witches bent over a cauldron, lost in incantations and the future, rather, three hollow-eyed waifs on a road from nowhere to nowhere. They lean against the wind-swept barrenness of Dis, the mythical underworld too often found on earth. These children of dust and poverty-- disadvantaged, discarded, perhaps diseased— clothed in a billowing silence as loud as a scream into emptiness.
Each morning, a cranky jalopy emits three gypsy children on Calle Juan Hurtado de Mendoza. Disheveled, they commandeer the steps of Kentucky Fried Chicken, playing miniature bouncers, their hands extended palms up. No pesos, no entrada. They devour mashed potatoes and biscuits when coins jingle in their fingers. Or if their simple begging fails, they stretch themselves across the steps, lie faint. Disorderly, discontent, dismissed by passersby. Hunger never far from their minds. Sandi Stromberg Sandi Stromberg was most recently named a finalist in Public Poetry’s nationwide contest ENOUGH and had work published in the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News. She co-edited Echoes of the Cordillera (ekphrastic poems, Museum of the Big Bend, 2018) and Untameable City: Poems on the Nature of Houston (Mutabilis Press, 2015). ** Mother Would Call the Place Godforsaken These three bundled on the coast of the Atlantic live above us in an apartment meant for summer rentals, bayside cheap with windows that leak so much curtains blow in a wind. There are nine upstairs-- three sisters, two brothers, parents, grandparents. We let them have the hot water to bathe first in the square tub under the skylight. Nana boils pots of water on the stove for Sister and me. We like how they knock on the steps above our room and whisper to us before we go to bed, the company in the walk to the yellow bus. Their mother works at the Snow Canning Company at the airport. I remember seeing how chipped her nails were from shelling clams as she drove us past the place our mother refuses to take a job. Our family has fallen apart, but we are landed-- a two story house across from the beach where I talk them into living after visiting their bungalow one street over. Our rent cheaper, the furnishings better, these are folks Mother doesn’t want us associating with, but their winter rent pays the mortgage and we have enough to eat. 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 Faces of Fishing Creek (Middle Creek Publishing), So Bright to Blind (Five Oaks Press), and Wildwood (Lummox Press). Ride the Pink Horse is forthcoming in 2019. With six nominations for a Pushcart Prize, her poems and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.S., U.K., and Canada. She is the editor and publisher of Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press. ** Free at Last It is not enough to wait, to search for signs and a way to curry favour with Fate-- It is not enough to stop remaining, to be finished with opening and closing others’ windows and doors-- It is not enough to travel somewhere, anywhere, to know how to find the North Star, to walk well-worn secret paths-- It is not enough to keep going forward—if always chains drag behind shadowing every step with invisible wings-- heavy, still, unopened-- falling down, and then rising up at last unburdened yet strangely hollow-- an outline from the past disappearing between impossibilities Kerfe Roig A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Follow her explorations on the blog she does with her friend Nina: https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/ and see more of her work on her website: http://kerferoig.com/ ** Hungry Eyes search an arid expanse for something—anything-- to slip behind impoverished lips. Bramble bushes border like militarized barbed wire-- a wealthy garden containing incongruous greens. These sparse tubers spark no hope behind black eyes too dry to cry before such extravagance. The pet dog cocks its ear, hears growls amidst flaps from billowy cotton, unaware it is the chorus preceding its demotion to four-legged luxury. 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 ** No Recourse So rapt they seem as they behold entombed as though in barren cold of carving made on poacher's tusk bestilled in pearled dawn and dusk so only chosen few would see the hunger there will always be when liberty is ripped and torn -- from flesh where it by grace was born -- and then recast as fear in eyes that autocrats so dearly prize in castles built from brutal force where ocean moat leaves no recourse to children only free to yearn for life they have no right to earn. Portly Bard Portly Bard: Old man. Ekphrastic fan. Prefers to craft with sole intent of verse becoming complement... ...and by such homage being lent... ideally also compliment. ** Aubade Of Febrero 19, 1949 Do not serenade my soul, niños tuberculosis comes to us all, I guess. Watch sun rise over Havana hear vultures kettle, beaks on drip. Thank our God you are blessed with sight, sound, with smell treasure your smocks, textilera crafted by Madre’s sweat, her fragile hands. Live life full in every moment, look to a future but remain in the now never overvalue precious chattels, while embellishing virtues inherent in our land. Tell your offspring where you were febrero 19, 1949 at dawn. Tell them you heard my final utterings crafted like Rembrandt, like El Greco. Hear my hues splutter, stammer. Feel dulcet greys blend with my cobalts. Touch red seeping from my ailing body. Listen to my last shrieks of abject pain. Retreat to your homes, niños for today will be long, a hot sun rising above nefarious raptors seeking to feast on my tattered lungs. 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. ** Niños de la Pobreza Eterna (an ovillejo after Fidelio Ponce de Leon’s Niños) In Rembrandt hues they pause before coarse nature, abject children who can’t escape this drab landscape-- nor its archives of oppression and desperation. Barren famine distends them into el Greco perspective, babes suckling on the effects of coarse nature, this drab landscape—and desperation. Bill Cushing Bill Cushing lived in several states, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico before moving to California. After earning an MFA in writing from Goddard College in Vermont, he now teaches at East Los Angeles and Mt. San Antonio colleges. He was named among the Top Ten L. A. Poets in 2017 as well as one of 2018’s “ten poets to watch” by Spectrum Publishing of Los Angeles. Along with writing, teaching, and facilitating a writing group (9 Bridges), he’s been published in Another Chicago Magazine, Brownstone Review, Metaphor, and West Trade Review. He is proud to have seen two of his poems featured here for previous ekphrastic challenges. His book of poems, A Former Life, will be released in June and is available online from Finishing Line Press. ** Reality Tales Fairy tales can come true; it can happen to you if you get to start with the food that you need, and a hope that will feed body, soul, and heart. But when grays of your days, unlike bright cabarets, dim your eyes with a haze found in poverty’s maze, then life becomes more hopeless every passing day, as strength drains from your limbs and you can’t get away. Though you’re told that you’re worth every treasure on earth, you must play your part; helping others get rich while you stay in your niche with a broken heart; and if you should survive til you reach twenty-five, you’ll have children who strive just to try to survive, and here is the worst part-- you’ll imitate this art-- if you are among the poorest from the start. Ken Gosse Ken Gosse prefers writing short, rhymed verse with traditional metre. Usually filled with whimsy and humour, this subject forgoes both. First published in FLR–East in November 2016, he is also in The Offbeat, Pure Slush, Parody, Home Planet News Online, and others. Raised in the Chicago suburbs, now retired, he and his wife have lived in Mesa, AZ, over twenty years. ** Wrapped They were wrapped like nuns but too young for nuns, or perhaps like babies but too old for babies. Shrouded in sepia tinted sadness they stood unposed for their picture with the dog, a black dog a hang dog the Black Dog threatening to engulf them all. Lynn White Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Vagabond Press, Light Journal and So It Goes Journal. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and on Facebook. ** las expresiónes de tristeza y perdición A holy trinity of ghosts of children haunt the hillside looking for Fulgencio Batista. Their gowns flow in winds of despair, crosses painted by the light of their prayers. Their gaunt eyes full of dark hunger, looking for justice. John C. Mannone John C. Mannone has work in Blue Fifth Review, Poetry South, Peacock Journal, Baltimore Review, Windhover and others. He won the Jean Ritchie Fellowship (2017) in Appalachian literature and served as the contest’s celebrity judge for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (2018). His third collection is Flux Lines (Celtic Cat, 2018). He edits poetry for Abyss & Apex and other journals. he’s a retired physics professor living in east Tennessee. http://jcmannone.wordpress.com
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