GUIDO RENI: Ekphrastic Writing Challenge Responses

Saint Joseph with the Infant Jesus, by Guido Reni (Italy) 1635.

Thank you to everyone who participated in our Christmas ekphrastic challenge! We are excited to post the responses today. -The Ekphrastic Review

The Song of Joseph 

three verses, each with chorus, based on the 1871 Christmas Carol “What Child is This?” using the traditional tune, “Greensleeves.”
 
What child is this, whom I hold near,
As we wander homeward this census year?
Born to my wife, whom I hold dear;
Still a child, this woman named Mary.
 
     This, this is my pride and joy; 
     My hope, my comfort, my firstborn boy!
     Lord, may he find peace and joy
     In a world full of soldiers and sinners.
 
In humblest manger she gave him birth
At a time when there should be warmth and mirth.
Once he’s a man, may he prove his worth
As my son, as the child of Mary.
 
     May he come to know our God;
     May God’s blessings follow where his feet trod.
     Lord, please grant him peace and joy
     In a world full of soldiers and sinners.
 
How can I teach this child right from wrong
but to live right and teach our scripture’s song?
He’ll just a short time to us belong,
To poor Joseph and loving wife Mary.
 
     Our Lord, God shall watch over you.
     May He bless with goodness great things you’ll do.
     May the Messiah bring peace and joy
     To this world filled with soldiers and sinners.

Ken Gosse

Ken Gosse prefers writing light verse with traditional metre and rhyme filled with whimsy and humour. First published in The First Literary Review–East in November 2016, his poems are also in The Offbeat, Pure Slush, Parody, The Ekphrastic Review, and others. Raised in the Chicago suburbs, now retired, he and his wife have lived in Mesa, AZ, over twenty years, usually with a herd of cats and dogs underfoot.

**

Speak

Every once in a while you open your mouth as if to speak.
To abandon the silence that has been your companion.
Your unspoken words are wrapped in gold.
Your conjured verbs bathed in silk.
Speak and abandon your silence to an Egyptian tomb.
Hieroglyphics to be deciphered by some future species of
Unknown origin.

Sandy Rochelle

Sandy Rochelle is an award winning, poet, actress and filmmaker. She is the recipient of the Autism Society of America's Literary Achievement Award. Individual publications include: Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press/Formidable Woman; Connecticut River Review; West Wind Review; Spirit in the Words; and Tuck Magazine. Her book of poetry, Soul Poems, was published by Finishing Line Press. She is featured in the film  Bohemia: The Life of a New York City Poet. http://sandyrochelle.com
​
**

Helpless Usurper

Whoever heard of an 80-year-old man
being caretaker to an infant
while in the process of returning
to that vulnerable state himself?

Preposterous, you say?

Couldn't agree more.

Yet here he is--
flailing about with pudgy pink limbs,
yanking my brittle grey beard
as if it is a comfort blankie.

Bad enough townspeople gossip
about his origin.
I hear archangels whisper
about lost favour.
They shoot hateful looks
in our direction, and mutter usurper
into winged shoulders.

These are dangerous days, indeed,
when we must hesitate--
consider the direction of the heavens.

Jordan Trethewey

Jordan Trethewey is a writer and editor living in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. His work has been featured in many online and print publications, and has been translated in Vietnamese and Farsi. To see more of his work go to: https://jordantretheweywriter.wordpress.com

**

The Word in Joseph’s Hand

The Word become Incarnate
Is held in Joseph’s hand.
He liberates His children,
Brings peace to all the land.

              Give thanks to God our Lord;
              To Him be all the glory
              For e’er remains the Word.

The Word in freshest styling
Who shares all human need.
The Babe and Papa smiling,
The all-embracing Seed.

              Give thanks to God our Lord;
              To Him be all the glory
              For e’er remains the Word.

The Word rebukes all folly,
We live by His command.
With ivy and with holly,
“Tis Christmas in the land!

              Give thanks to God our Lord;
              To Him be all the glory
              For e’er remains the Word.

Carole Mertz

Carole Mertz, poet and essayist, has completed the U. of Iowa-sponsored MOOC in time to celebrate the Christmas Holiday, 2018. She writes in Parma, Ohio.

**

To Reni Regarding Saint Joseph...

How fitting is unhaloed head
denoting journey still ahead
of Heaven's work that he would do
as foster God and father too

for child in his reflected glow
the world would come as Christ to know
who from the trade of square and rule
would craft a selfless love as tool

with which eternal Grace could build,
in those who sought to be fulfilled,
the temples where  --  by fervent prayer,
good will, and sacrificial care  --

as servants they could know the peace
of joys assured that would not cease.

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.

**

I Might Be Glimpsing Something Guido Didn't Paint

An old hippy I feel decently fond of looks exactly like Joseph. 
He's awkward also when holding a plump baby god, 
just as absorbed, just as adoring. Like Joseph he's oblivious 
when Mary steps away to steal a moment with her angel. 
Nor does he notice when ominous eyes haunt the dark trees.

One eye, a slice of face, a dark beard, the look of a hated patron. 
Another eye, another slice of face, more mask-like, worse. Guido 
gets away with this, his joke. Patrons don't see themselves in art 
unless flattered. Or maybe this one thought he saw— 

Oh, no, my Lord, that's fallen Lucifer and then beside him, 
deeper into shadow, is my fancy, please forgive--
a mask resembling me. You see? I knew you had the eye. 
Our little secret, yes? The lesser folk will note the sacred pair 
and nothing else. A hint of you in Joseph? I didn't realize. 
The child? You might be right. I remember when your little one 
was just this size. Many thanks, my Lord. Addio. Many thanks. 

All for the privilege of painting with smooth strokes the light, the dark--
astonished love—a man and child—and in the trees the threat, 
or joke. Either way, attention rendered to the whole of things. 
This painting calms me. It calmed Guido too. They say he had a temper.

Shirley Glubka

Shirley Glubka is a retired psychotherapist, the author of four poetry collections, a mixed genre collection, and two novels. Her latest poetry collection is Through the Fracture in the I: Erasure Poetry; her most recent novel: The Bright Logic of Wilma Schuh. Shirley lives in Prospect, Maine with her spouse, Virginia Holmes. Website: http://shirleyglubka.weebly.com/ Online poetry at The Ekphrastic Review here; at 2River View here; at The Ghazal Page here; and at Unlost Journal here and here.

**

San Giuseppe con il bambino Gesù

I didn’t know Saint Joseph’s nose was Mid-
Mediterranean. I’ve always thought
Eastern-. Likewise, I didn’t know Joseph’s
skin was a Southern-European beige,
rather than the lush latte-brown of bone-dry
Palestine, where I thought he lived. And
barely wavy hair? Wasn’t Joe poor, too,
sometimes nomadic, an itinerant carpenter
who built olivewood tables and benches
for townies not cursed or crushed by caste?
Then how’d he get yards and yards of fine, starched
broadcloth in which to shawl himself, and of a
royal orange to boot? And a collared coat?
To think I’ve had it so wrong for so long.
I know Joe had to adopt Mary’s Jesus--
but from Sweden? Wouldn’t that red hair and
fair hide have fried under desert conditions?
Well, maybe the hillsides around Nazareth
really were that verdant and the blue sky
overrun by pronounced clouds filling with rain.
But if the shepherds were actually watching
their flocks in the fall, and Jesus looks to be,
what, give-or-take eight months old? Zero rain!
Granted, an angel could have flounced around
in just about any locale, with Mary--
or someone who looks vaguely like Mary--
kneeling seemingly prayerfully within
the distant gloom. So the plot, after all,
could be the same. Despite conflicting
calendars, conflicting phases of the moon and
a wandering star, dissolving agreement
about serpents, bushes, graveyards, and tongues,
the dangled message fogged-in for centuries
could still recoil and curve back the same: Curb
the swollen ego! Close the sluice of unmet
greed! Tame the spiral of unhinged desire!
And despite a High-Baroque, Bolognese
painter’s shifting of the scene to his anti-
Semitic Italy, at least he didn’t try
to wrench away the wonder-filled contact
between a father and his almost-crawling son:
the tender wrangling of a squirmy body,
the brushing then grabbing of the beard,
the kiss to come from that spellbound mouth.

D.R. James

​D. R. James has taught college writing, literature, and peace-making for 34 years and lives in the woods outside Saugatuck, Michigan. His poems and prose appear in various journals and anthologies, his latest of seven poetry collections is If god were gentle from Dos Madres Press (2017), his microchapbook All Her Jazz is free and downloadable-for-the-folding at Origami Poems Project, and his new chapbook Surreal Expulsion will be released in spring 2019 by The Poetry Box. www.amazon.com/author/drjamesauthorpage

**

On Becoming a Point of Light

The universe attempts to grow a crown--
a place for birds to embellish visions,
seedlings of a flowering tree.
The membrane disintegrates--
sojourner shining
like a flashlight in the dark.
Where is the passage?
Where the threshold to cross
to uncross
to enter and depart?
I construct landscapes of possibilities--
clearings for comfort,
regenerations for the lost and betrayed,
the alone and unattached--
You are a vessel,
a compass
pointing to places of becoming
alive
charged with invisible threads,
netted in something that is not there,
nourished by merging spirals--
Inside we fall together.
Inside we are a part of all that is
and all that is not.
Inside we do not need
to answer the unasked.
In this still place 
we hold on to the air--
undestinated,
but chanting yes
yes yes
yes

Yes.

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/

**

The Gift

He holds his gift
as a porcelain dish,
unsure of the future
fragile in hands,

hands of a carpenter
solid, safe
enveloping child
with dimpled skin,

skin sinking, folding
not quite fitting
the sculptured mould
of father’s eye,

eyes locked bright
on light infused face
wispy hair
like old man’s beard,

bearded wisdom
protector, protected
holding his gift
as a porcelain dish.

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 magazines. She is presently editing her work and writing new material, particularly in response to ekphrastic challenges. Alongside poetry, Kate enjoys art, dance and playing her growing collection of guitars and ukuleles!

**

A Beat to a Different Drum

 “Which one is your grandchild?” Ten minutes before the Christmas pageant was to begin, a young woman leaned across an unoccupied seat dividing us while I was reading the program notes. I glanced up over the bridge of my glasses, my eyes meeting her bright, chipper face, and then drifting down to her ugly Christmas sweater. I held my tongue. The seat on the other side of her was unoccupied as well.
        
I smiled politely and pointed at the brown hair, blue eyed, eight year old boy with the drum strap draped around his neck, standing to the side of the stage in the shadows, shaking as if he were outside in a blizzard. Pre-show jitters, which, moments before, I tried to convince him were normal - do your best, what happens, happens.
        
“That’s my son.”
        
She blushed. I wanted to reassure her that this had happened frequently; she was not the first nor would be the last to think Sean was my grandson. Sean didn’t have grandparents; my parents had passed away long before I had met my wife. We had never thought we could have children until one day arriving home from a three-week trip in the Mediterranean and Europe, she told me the news.
        
“He plays the drums?” The woman asked, trying to squirm her way out of her embarrassment. That’s all right, I wanted to reassure her, one time I asked a plump woman when was the baby due. That was embarrassing.
        
“He tries.” I closed the program and allowed it to balance on my leg. “Two years ago, Sean and I toured the Brooklyn Museum. When he had seen Eastman Johnson’s painting - Study for the Wounded Drummer Boy - it had captured his imagination. This wasn’t surprising since I had told him stories about the Civil War - not from firsthand knowledge. I was a history major in college before going into business. I have the means and the time now to spend with him. That Christmas when I had asked Sean what he wanted Santa to bring him, he yelled, ‘a drum set.’ So I wrote drum set in the letter to Ol’ Saint Nicholas. I added a P.S. to the letter - please bring Sean’s dear old Dad earplugs. Even with the earplugs, Christmas Day was anything but a silent night.”
        
“I’m sure he’ll play wonderfully tonight.”
        
“Do you have a son or daughter in the pageant?”
        
“My daughter sings in the choir, she’s eleven.” She craned her neck. “Knowing Melanie she’s probably goofing off somewhere with her friends. I swear that girl doesn’t have a nerve in her body.” 
        
“Maybe your daughter can share some of her self-confidence with Sean.”
        
She laughed.
        
“What business are you in?” she asked.
        
“I own L&M Lumber Company. My carpenters built the stage scenery.”
        
I removed my coat, which I had draped over the empty chair.
        
“This seat isn’t taken. My name is Kevin, by the way.”
        
“I’m Lynda.” She smiled.
        
Lynda slid over. The auditorium lights dimmed. The performers stepped on stage; the parents clapped and whistled. I gave Sean the thumbs up and mouthed - what happens, happens.
          
The chorus sang:
        
“Come, they told me...*”
        
Pa-Rum-Pa-Pum-Pum, Sean played with perfect pitch and timing. I was proud.

At the last leg of our European trip, my wife and I toured the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. While she was off in another wing, I stood there, my eyes transfixed on only one painting, a painting of Guido Reni’s Saint Joseph with the Infant Jesus. The joy on St. Joseph’s face questioned my decision early in life not to have a family. Was I being selfish focusing solely on my business?

So when we had arrived back home, the news of her pregnancy was not a total shock. What was even more shocking and devastating was when the paramedics had to rush her to the emergency room for a C-section. I was nervous for her and for being a father so late in life. My wife squeezed my hand and said, “Do your best, what happens, happens.” Then she smiled at me. Somehow I knew that I would not see my wife again. I kissed her.

Hours later, the nurse brought Sean out to me, wrapped in swaddling cloths. Then I smiled at him, my son and me.
 
Matthew Hefferin

*lyrics from "The Little Drummer Boy" by Katherine Kennicott Davis, 1941.

Matthew Hefferin loves writing flash fiction and short stories. He is currently writing a book of ekphrastic prose poems based on his photographs.