 The Last Supper, by Sister Plautilla Nelli (Florence) 1560s Pray For The Paintress To feel the strength of his belief, my head against his heart, the dark walls of night opening to a last intimacy was to feel how the universe was altered by a storm surge, time an unlimited translation of what he had been to me -- flesh and flash -- the lightning bolting what had ever been an anonymous doorway, lock and key and words, roses I'd plucked from the garden to go with the bread, and the wine called blood -- what he would shed when the heavens were ripped open in premonition -- the sky falling! paradise in storm and stigmata! how the earth is scarred and wounded by the nails and thorns; yet his heartbeat remains steady, and true, as the doorway frames the dinner, a lunette as I painted the table, how I was dear to him hidden in the background of his passion, my paint brush shaping the twelve -- John, Andrew, James, Phillip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, Simon; Judas who will betray love with a kiss; 2 named Judas, 2 Simon, and 2 James -- how church history confuses and explains why I must be hidden, ghostly as the spirit of the moon, mother, somehow, to 12 rising suns -- All for One! -- Pray for me! as I do not follow the Order of instruction -- Do Not Sit Near The Son of God! Do not imagine it is you who fills his heart on this last night in one world before we cross to another, O my love, before the paint dries. Laurie Newendorp Laurie Newendorp is unsure of many things. Sometimes visionary, she has tried to explain the inexplicable in her recent book, When Dreams Were Poems, but the essence of love and spirituality -- their certainty -- can only be described as those who are in her heart. Nelli's painting beautifully describes comfort, as do Stanley Plumly's words about his birth, and his grandmother, in “After Whistler,” a poem that ends "...holding me small in her small arms, hers, in the calendar dark, my head against her heart." ** Someday I Will Love John Milkereit
John, no need to worry. A piece of bread is only a piece of bread. John, keep it if you want or give one or two pieces to your guests or not. You do not have to count. No fair share since betrayal is eating supper. If you want to offer a gentle touch to Mary wrapped in her red and olive cloth. If you want to drink more wine, just ask for more, no need to keep glasses full. And no need to cut the roasted lamb in the turquoise bowl. You have never liked fava beans, so do not eat those. Or the lettuce heads. Be gentle on yourself looking holy with a halo. A moon sliver awaits your naked body behind these brown panels. John, it’s the last night to dance. So go, just laugh, and say “I will. Yes, I will.” John Milkereit John Milkereit is a mechanical engineer working in the oil & gas industry, who lives in Houston, Texas. His poems have appeared in various literary journals including The Ekphrastic Review, San Pedro River Review, and The Ocotillo Review. He completed a M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop in Tacoma, WA in 2016. His most recent collection of poems, Drive the World in a Taxicab, was published by Lamar University Press. He is working on his next collection of poems. ** Dear Sister Plautilla Nelli from your conservator, Rossella Lari “It’s not unusual for conservators to spend more hours alone with a great work than the artist themselves.” The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, Dominic Smith “One will never get closer to an artist than in the restoration studio.” — Rossella Lari, conservator In the beginning, I stood in awe before neglect. Your painting once rolled like a canvas rag and stored in a drawer. A victim of floods, of Napoleon’s dislike of religious art. So much damage to your Jesus and his disciples. Could I resurrect the first Last Supper by a woman? As the years passed, I began to see you-- self-taught painter woman nun—more clearly, to learn how you worked, how you mentored sister apprentices in the power of strong brushstrokes and chiaroscuros. You knew what you wanted, as surely as any male master-artist of the 1600s. For four years I have stood before your art. The work has ended. For the painting-- a new beginning. I thank you for nourishing me as Jesus nourished his followers. I stand in awe of the veined hands, muscled arm, Jesus’s eyelashes. In awe of your courage, painting under the rule of Savonarola, hellfire preacher of the ferocious, burning eye, who approved of your tableaux, how they saved women from the deadly sin of sloth. Sandi Stromberg Sandi Stromberg is thriving on challenges from The Ekphrastic Review. What better company during lockdown than poetry and art! She has poems accepted for the 2021 Texas Poetry Calendar, Snapdragon: A Journal of Art and Healing, and loved contributing to formidable woman sanctuary’s Spring 2020 Renga issue, the editor’s aim to create “evolutionary-lit.” ** Float I rest my head in your hands, close my eyes and feel your shoulder beneath my ear. I remember the first time you held me this way. I remember their fight: something about a wandering eye, and the dinner table conflagrated before our eyes. The heat of our father’s breath, the shrill of our mother’s tone, the soft pace of your fingers across my back. You took me to the stars, let us watch the eruption of our home from the distance of a lightyear. Thank you for making me an astronaut, for showing me how to float, eyes closed, when forks and tablecloth felt heavier than Earth itself. Niko Malouf As a teenager living in Los Angeles, I enjoy writing about the things that surround me, stimulate me, the events of my adolescence as well as the happenings of the world. I hope to share my experiences and perspective with others and inspire them to do the same. ** 2008 C.E.: The Last Supper at George’s for George, Nick, Christiana and Shaohua 1. “How is the spaghetti? Is the beef missing something?” Surprisingly, this time, Christiana needed some reassurance. “We still should’ve made something special. But you, Big-Babies, were too impatient and needed something fast. So, Bon Appétit!” She lodges the case in her defence straight away, too. “Here, Malaka![1] A hint of some olive oil should make it edible. It’s straight from my Olive Gardens in Crete,” teasing her, George passes me the unbranded and unlabelled glass bottle. “And eat some Feta; it’s homemade feta—my grandma’s special recipe. It’s good for you!” George’s hospitality had always been second to none. 2. “So, shall we?” Nick sends a quick glance my way for an approval. “Sure, Dr. Karf! What better way to compliment ‘The Last Supper’ than a fine tobacco, Stella and chess,” I reaffirmed. 3. The Next Morning In the bus, en route to the Heathrow Airport to fly out of the UK for the last time, I couldn’t stop reminiscing and smiling: we treated ourselves—and deservingly so, too—by paying a visit—a homage, more like—to the grave of Karl Marx in London before saying the last goodbyes. And back in 2004 C.E., it was merely a romantic idea to return to Leicester to further our personal and academic causes by continuing onto the PhD programme. … Shaohua will be fine; she will be fine! Postscriptum Ever so often, I leave this song, Yaarian (Friendship), by Vital Signs[2] playing in the background: To those, who leave friends behind, Life must be awfully harsh.[3] Saad Ali [1] ‘Malaka’ implies a loser or an idiot. It’s a very common slang used by the Greeks, when having a casual conversation among friends. But outside of a casual friendly conversation(s), this slang can be very offensive, if said to a stranger. [2] Vital Signs are an iconic music band from Pakistan, who revolutionized the Pop Music Scene in the South Asia in the 1980s. [3] This is my literal translation of the lyrics by Vital Signs: “Yaaron ko, Jo bhe choar kay chalay jaatay hain, Unhain zindage rulati hogi.” Saad Ali (b. 1980 C.E. in Okara, Pakistan) has been brought up in the UK and Pakistan. He holds a BSc and an MSc in Management from the University of Leicester, UK. He is an existential philosopher-poet. Ali has authored four books of poetry i.e. Ephemeral Echoes (AuthorHouse, 2018), Metamorphoses: Poetic Discourses (AuthorHouse, 2019), Ekphrases: Book One (AuthorHouse, 2020), and Prose Poems Βιβλίο Άλφα (AuthorHouse, 2020). By profession, he is a Lecturer, Consultant and Trainer/Mentor. Some of his influences include: Vyasa, Homer, Ovid, Attar, Rumi, Nietzsche, and Tagore. He is fond of the Persian, Chinese and Greek cuisines. He likes learning different languages, travelling by train and exploring cities on foot. To learn more about his work, please visit www.saadalipoetry.com. ** The Last Supper by Sister Plautilla Nelli, OP 1524-1588 to the cloistered dominican sisters in lufkin, texas as a child perhaps she was left at the convent-- a family commodity like so many others but then as now life was full of surprises and she was certainly one . . . donning her black and white lifestyle whose cloistered walls sheltered sacred spaces she canvased into color her self-taught learning then she taught women like herself who would gift this holy supper to grace the nuns own meals in the dining room of their own hidden lives Sister Lou Ella Hickman Sister Lou Ella Hickman’s poems and articles have appeared in numerous magazines and journals as well as four anthologies. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015. (Press 53) ** Praying Because of the Paintress ‘Nelli signed her paintings as "Pray for the Paintress" after her name, confirming her role in spite of her gender’ - Wikipedia the haloed saints turn to You like sunflowers soaking in soft sun rays, genome of devotion visible along sinewy palms, their mien ruffled like flower petals caught in a storm You coast through the Last Supper, reveal the calculus of betrayal and break bread with the traitor snow shower of crumbs meld into the crisp white table-cloth, the scene safe and secure, ferried along the route of proper channel, from master to disciple until it reaches the paintress who leads me to the threshold of history so close, I can hear nirvana breathe through pores of the lit painting wings of a silent prayer flutter on my lips before take off Preeth Ganapathy Preeth Ganapathy is a software engineer turned civil servant. She is an officer of Indian Revenue Service who hails from Coorg and currently resides in Bangalore, India. Writing has been her passion since childhood. Her works have been published or are upcoming in Nymphs, The Short Humour Site, Red Wolf Journal and Spark (India) among other online magazines. ** The Rectangular Table Thoughts become things, solid and immovable, packed with the emotional weight of betrayal-- constructed carefully to contain the faithful, to defend against heresy, to prevent escape. Who will name the mothers, the daughters, the spirits of the holy, the sacred, earth? What is outside this room remains unheard, unseen, meaningless--limited to the symbolic artifice of a vessel that contains only the blood of fathers and sons, filled to the brim with the reigns of kings and princes who deny the dances, the wisdom, of women, the circles that follow the moon, the earth, the seasons without end Kerfe Roig Kerfe Roig is sheltering, writing, and making art in New York City. You can see more of her work on her blog https://kblog.blog/ ** Untitled it’s the fold of the tablecloth he notices, resting his blurry head against jesus’ shoulder, warm on wine, warm by the hand cupping his cheek like a mother’s would, like his mother’s did. the tablecloth is so even, and he can feel the lip of one of the folds brushing against his knee, and he takes one of his hands, probably the left, and pinches the cloth between his forefinger and thumb and trails along the rough hemmed edge, it is the nicest table cloth he has ever seen, it is the nicest fabric he has ever touched, and jesus’ head droops to rest on his, like a brother would, like a tired friend would. but jesus is not the tired one, and the steady wash of his words, muffled and darkened by wine, like when he would drowsily nod off as a child listening to his grandmother and grandfather talk the only room over, candlelight whispering yellow and blanket scratchy under his chin, just like the itch of jesus’ beard, but that is grazing his forehead, not his chin, like his lord would- kindly, reassuringly, pulling him to a more comfortable position that he didn’t even know he wanted but his lord did, and he closes his eyes as one of the other men speak up. and the night softens to his blood in his heart and the tablecloth’s rough seam against his fingertips and jesus’ words spilling spilling spilling. jesus leaves him there when he must depart, unwoken, and so does everyone else, just like when he was a child and his older brothers would leave him behind when they didn’t want to play with him, and he blinks bleary buoyant a little still, and he sits up and the tablecloth is uneven now, the squares not as uniform, wrinkled and twisted, and jesus’ shawl is draped over him, smelling like him, like his mother’s scarf did whenever she gave it to him when he was cold. and that was the last time he saw jesus. he didn’t realize it, though, because he was pulling the shawl more tightly over him and dropping his head back down onto the bench and staring at the closely blurred lips of the twisted folds of the tablecloth he remembers admiring through the fog the night before. Madeline McConnell Madeline McConnell: "There is nothing you need to know about me." ** To Sister Nelli Regarding The Last Supper How fitting work they resurrect you so uniquely would perfect as Passion that you dared embrace as if the meal so commonplace to holy women given art to shield from sloth devoted heart yet left to learn, each on her own, by wit and grit the skill self-grown to craft this moment much like those depicted who from lives arose as ordinary souls to be the face of faith and destiny by journey each would tread alone together by example shown. 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.
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November 2023
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