Cape Cod Evening On the outskirts of Truro, where the town gives way to a locust grove, I dive deep into the details of early evening. Sat on the porch in undershirt and slacks, I bathe in autumn breeze, molasses sweet: the same air that disturbs Josephine’s skirt and ruffles the brush strokes of Bonnie’s fur. Just as the day turns dark, she cocks her head, perhaps distracted by the nearby trill of a whippoorwill, and watches through grass in need of a cutting towards the wood, ears and tail up, guarding her property. Later, before bed, one last cigarette. The heady scent of freshly ground coffee. A little reminiscing on old friends. An emergency radio broadcast: an escaped convict, at loose in the woods hunting for a warm place to take shelter. Ross Thompson Ross Thompson is a writer from Bangor, Northern Ireland. His debut poetry collection Threading The Light is published by Dedalus Press. His work has appeared on television, radio, short films and in a wide range of publications. Most recently, he wrote and curated A Silent War, a collaborative audio response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He is currently preparing a second full-length book of poems.
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Congratulations to Olivia Wolford, one of our nominees for Best Microfiction. Her story, "Star Swallowed" was chosen as a winner to appear in the Best Microfiction Anthology 2022. The series was founded by Meg Pokrass and Gary Fincke, and this year's judge and guest editor was Tania Hershman. We are over the moon to see The Ekphrastic Review represented in this fantastic series. Last year, Cyndi MacMillan's story, When Alice Became the Rabbit, was chosen. Congratulations to ALL of our nominees, this year and last year. Congratulations to all the authors chosen for this year's anthology. You can find the complete list here, and learn more about the series. READ: Star Swallowed, by Olivia Wolford https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/star-swallowed-by-olivia-wolford ** Best Microfiction Anthology Awards 2022 (Nominations for Works Published in 2021) Star Swallowed, by Olivia Wolford https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/star-swallowed-by-olivia-wolford Hollow, by Christina Pan https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/hollow-by-christina-pan Lost Rivers, by Jamie Brian https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/lost-rivers-by-jamie-brian The Moon Practises the Art of Night Photography, by Marjory Woodfield https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-writing-challenges/selected-challenge-responses-garabet-yazmaciyan Elusions, by Kerfe Roig https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-writing-challenges/selected-challenge-responses-garabet-yazmaciyan At the Pool Party for My Niece’s Graduation from Middle School, by Nancy Ludmerer https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/at-the-pool-party-for-my-nieces-graduation-from-middle-school-by-nancy-ludmerer Red is Too Cliche I see her. It is the third day she is walking by my flat. Today she got a little closer than yesterday. And today, she is carrying bougainvillea. * I look at the bougainvillea branch bearing too many flowers outside my window. It is a good day to write. I go to the computer with a glass of water and start typing. Today, the words come flowing like a flood. It is almost as if somebody recites it to me in hushed tones from insides my head. Somebody who resides inside my head. I hit save. I do not edit this draft. But I read. And reread. * I reread the legend of Kannagi. I feel sad for her. I have driven past the temple dedicated to her name, back home. It was always full of women. All kinds of women. Too much women. So too much flowers. Strings and strings of jasmines. * This is too much. Should I open the window and ask her what she wants? I see the bunch of ixora in her hand. But I don’t like ixora. So I go to the computer to write. Today, there is no voice. I feel lonely. I want to paint. * Kannagi sold her first painting. A Neo-Dada art. She juxtaposed a newspaper, a birth control pill, a breast and an anklet. Because blood is red and red is too cliché, she used maroon and black. Like a mad woman she threw buckets of maroon at the painting. And smudged it with a black paint brush. And when she was done, she sprinkled a diluted white with fingers. Like a mad woman. She went home with a full heart. But her boyfriend was on his knees. With a bouquet of red roses. And a ring. She hated red roses. She hated red. She had just started having a good day. * It is a good day. I go for a morning jog and come back. I want to write. What do you do when you want to write but don’t have the words? I take a sip of ginger tea and look out the window. She is there. She has come again. Today she is standing outside my door. And today, she is carrying lilies. Ding-dong. That’s my doorbell. I open the door. Her face looks scared. And helpless. We stare into each other’s eyes for fourteen seconds. ‘What now?’ she asks. ‘I – I don’t know’ I pull out the hair stick and let my hair down. ‘Come in?’ She walks straight to the study. ‘These are for the anklet’ she smiles and leaves the lilies near the computer ‘appreciate it’. She sends her finger through the spines of my books. Classics. Biographies. Art. She stops. ‘I want to live’ she says, ‘please let me live’. Her voice, so delicate and soft. I hold her hands and I kiss them. She looks beautiful. Like a goddess. * ‘Is she a goddess or a human, Kannagi,’ I asked my grandmother once, ‘according to the legend?’. ‘Why does that matter?’ ‘That much chastity…for a human?’ ‘That much anger…for a goddess?’ ‘But a human can’t tear a breast and fling it at a city!’ I said, touching my chest. ‘But a goddess can’t love like a woman!’ she said, touching her heart. * How would you know if it’s your heart or your chest that aches, she wondered. She had a pain in her chest, Kannagi. If the pain is fluctuating it is probably the heart, that’s what she had heard. So it was her heart. It was bleeding. She was not alone; she was with child. So she said ‘yes’. But she asked him to take the roses out of her sight. And now she will have to fly back home. A new canvas. * The canvas is very thick. The red paint does not bleed through it. I am painting a slut. Ding-dong. She has come again. I open the door. I see jasmines in her hair. But there is a dagger in her right hand. ‘Kannagi?’ ‘What did I ever do to you, you crazy bitch?’ she jumps on to me and I fall down. She gets on top of me, pulls the string of jasmines from her hair and wraps it around my neck. ‘Kannagi!’ I shout. ‘Kannagi, stop!’ ‘You made me pregnant?’ she screeches, ‘you made me get married to that bastard? And fly back home?’ she cackles. Like a mad woman. ‘I pleaded you to let me live! I pleaded!’ she howls as loud as she can. Then she wails, ‘I only wanted to live...to paint… paint!’. She covers her face with her hands and weeps. Her dagger slips down and I swiftly pick it up. My heart races as I raise my hand to stab her in the back. But I can’t. I can’t. Because I made her. She is mine. We do not move for fourteen seconds. We stare into each other’s eyes. ‘Fuck you!’ she shouts and flings her breast at my study. Then she stabs herself. With my hand. * Kannagi moved back to her ancestral home with her husband and unborn child. Ciara Mandulee Mendis This story is inspired by the legend of the goddess Kannagi. You can learn more about her here. Ciara Mandulee Mendis is a Sri Lankan writer. Her debut collection of short stories titled The Red Brick Wall was shortlisted for Gratiaen Prize 2020, the most coveted award given for Sri Lankan writing in English. She holds an M.A. in English Studies from University of Colombo. She is employed as Assistant Director (Literature & Publications) at the Department of Cultural Affairs, Sri Lanka. Please visit our virtual bookshelves from time to time.
We have an Ekphrastic Bookshelf and a Contributor Bookshelf. Treat yourself to a new book by one of our writers or supporters. Ekphrastic shelf listings have a minimum of three ekphrastic works or are entirely ekphrastic. Contributor listings can be on any topic by writers published here. There is an amazing selection of gems by your favourite TER writers. Check it out! Three Sisters Spinnin, weavin, snippin, you said. But I’m glad there’re three of us. I know, three means one is always ganged up on, like when you and Agnes left me out of that double-date with those guys from town, or when you both pretended to be mad that I was givin myself airs after Jean told Mother I bought rouge and she hit me with the belt. But I’m still glad. Two girls are always fightin, Mother said, bitter like greens after a frost. I say if there was only two of us we wouldn’t look right. Just look at our hands, loopin and mendin and keepin place in the almanac. If there were just two of us I’d see you’re not readin the sheet. You’ve sailed ahead, somewhere past the canvas. Helena Feder Helena Feder is the author of Ecocriticism and the Idea of Culture (2014/2016) and many articles, essays, interviews, and poems. She is the editor of several journal issues and two books: You Are the River (NCMA 2021) and Close Reading the Anthropocene (Routledge 2021). She is Associate Professor of Literature and Environment at ECU, and currently working on her first book of poems. At Holy Wisdom Monastery Where is a blue heron balanced on one leg. Do you see a fox standing on the hill. I am in paradise, but the rain shatters my dream. If I still wore my warrior spirit, I would dance to lunch through the sparkling grass, but my warrior grows toothless and is afraid to melt—like mother’s warning. If I still wore my warrior spirit, I would hike these muddy trails, careless of worms drinking wet air, stay out too long, fry like spaghetti. If my warrior spirit was here, I would write a poem rescuing a blue fox with one leg caught in a trap, left by some self-made Davy Crockett. I would write him into the creek, caught in a web of plastic molds for beer cans, stepping on a fork’s curved tines tossed into the creek with his Taco Bell bag of limp hot sauce packets. But I’m an old lady whose warrior visits only in dreams of flying down the wind behind a boat, jumping the waves, and dropping one ski. Jackie Langetieg This poem was written with Ulla Thynell's (Finland) Forgotten Garden 2021 in mind. We invite you to click here to see it. Jackie Langetieg has published poems in literary magazines: Verse Wisconsin, Blue Heron Review.She’s won awards, such as WWA’s Jade Ring contest, Bards Chair, and Wisconsin Academy Poem of the Year. She is a regular contributor to the Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar. She has written five books of poems, including Letter to My Daughter, and a memoir, Filling the Cracks with Gold. Three A.M. at the Museum, by Alarie Tennille Named Director’s Pick at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City Regulars at The Ekphrastic Review know Alarie Tennille as a frequent contributor, guest judge, and consultant. All three of her poetry collections are featured on TER’s Ekphrastic Bookshelf. Alarie has loved art from early childhood, so it was not surprising for art to be a major influence in her writing. She moved to Kansas City, Missouri, in February 1982, when her husband took a new job there. Alarie knew it would be hard to leave her job and everyone she knew in Virginia, the only place she’d called home. But the Relocation Specialist helping to sell them on KC was good at her job. She took them out for a lovely lunch and then to the Nelson-Atkins Museum, one of the great treasures of the Midwest. Alarie decided she could be at home there. Chris has been a volunteer at the museum for 14 years, and he and Alarie have been members of the museum even longer. Sadly, the pandemic closed the museum to visitors for many months. One bright spot was when the Kansas City Zoo brought penguins to visit the museum and recorded a video of them waddling around the galleries, looking as though they thoroughly enjoyed it. Alarie turned that adventure into a poem in her book. The museum also figured in several other poems, so she sent a copy as a gift to the museum Director, Dr. Julián Zugazagoitia, in appreciation. In early January, Chris was working a volunteer shift in the archives and attending a Zoom staff meeting. There was Director Zugazagoitia holding up a book. The archivist turned to Chris and asked, “Isn’t that Alarie’s book?” Yes! The Director went on to discuss what ekphrastic writing is, gave a shout out to The Ekphrastic Review, and read Alarie’s title poem. Chris couldn’t wait to get home to tell Alarie the exciting news, but it got even better. A follow-up email with notes from the meeting shared the websites for Alarie and for TER. Then the Museum Shop Manager told Alarie that her book would be sold as a Director’s Pick. ** Three A.M. at the Museum, by Alarie Tennille Kelsay Books, 2021 with forward by The Ekphrastic Review! Get your copy online: https://www.amazon.com/Three-M-at-Museum/dp/195435360X
Paul Hetherington Au Bain: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/63720 Femme nue a la jambe pliee: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/63859 Deux buveurs catalans: www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.39091.html Taureau ailé contemple par quatre enfants: https://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/Lots/auction-lot/PABLO-PICASSO-Taureau-ailé-contemplé-par-Quatre-Enfants?saleno=2522&lotNo=327&refNo=764734 Sculpteur, modele accroupi et tete sculptee: http://www.artnet.com/artists/pablo-picasso/sculpteur-modèle-accroupi-et-tête-sculptée-from-ZwFR9uKXd_bw3O1JxGWjDg2 Paul Hetherington is a distinguished Australian poet. He has published 16 full-length collections of poetry and prose poetry, including Her One Hundred and Seven Words (MadHat, 2021), the co-authored epistolary prose poetry sequence, Fugitive Letters (with Cassandra Atherton, Recent Work Press, 2020), and Typewriter and Manuscript (Life Before Man, 2020), along with a verse novel and 12 poetry chapbooks. He has won or been nominated for more than 30 national and international awards and competitions. With Cassandra Atherton, he is co-author of Prose Poetry: An Introduction (Princeton University Press, 2020) and co-editor of Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry (Melbourne University Press, 2020). Whistler’s Mother’s Son The painting known as Whistler’s Mother gave birth to a son, a painting of the painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler. The painting of Whistler, in turn, painted a painting of its mother, the painting of Whistler’s mother. This painting, the painting of the painting of Whistler’s mother, painted by the painting of Whistler the painter, gave birth, but this time to a daughter, a flesh and blood daughter who turned out to be the real-life Whistler’s mother. This daughter, Whistler’s mother, gave birth to a son named James Abbott McNeill Whistler, who immortalized her in a painting known as Arrangement in Gray and Black Number 1. Peter Cherches This story was first published in Whistler's Mother's Son, the author's short story collection, Pelekinesis, 2020. Called “one of the innovators of the short short story” by Publishers Weekly, Peter Cherches’ most recent book is Tracks: Memoirs from a Life with Music (Bamboo Dart Press). His writing has appeared in scores of magazines, anthologies and websites, including Harper’s, Transatlantic Review, Flash, Bomb, Semiotext(e), and Fiction International, as well as Billy Collins’ Poetry 180 website and anthology. He has published three volumes of short prose fiction with Pelekinesis since 2013: Lift Your Right Arm, Autobiography Without Words, and Whistler’s Mother’s Son. I. Man on Verandah I sit alone, except for one standoffish piebald cat. But none should pity me. I like this view: the bay untroubled and pale blue, a clear sky kissed by morning sun, and fantasies my brain has spun. In one I’m young again; I’ve won a sailboat race. And though it’s true I sit alone, I see my Ruthie, almost done with one more crossword. She would stun me with the news. I think she knew her odds were slim; I had no clue. Although I thought we’d just begun, I sit alone. II. Dog and Priest We take the painter’s word for it: a priest, the title says. It’s plausible: hands clean, clothes dark and neatly pressed—the slacks still creased— but no clerical collar can be seen, only the dog’s. The black Lab sits up straight, alert beside the lounging man of God, who may be idling here to contemplate Creation in this lake. But it seems odd that he should sprawl here in these formal clothes— and though it’s likely he surveys the vast blue water, that’s just something we suppose; perhaps instead he keeps his eyes downcast. The dog’s head, with its bright eye, mutely mocks the vagueness of the man whose face it blocks. III. Pacific The man’s broad back is what seduces me. He stands between the ocean—vast and pale— and that dark gun I wish I didn’t see, its foreground prominence undoubtedly a sign of trouble. Nobody could fail to notice it, but what seduces me is that broad back, the muscularity and cool slouch of a strong and silent male in trouble. And I wish I didn’t see the man’s past in the gun’s proximity, the evidence of some grim film-noir tale he’s turned his back on. What seduces me is how his posture hints that he can’t flee; a breaker falls, but he’s known larger-scale collapse, his future difficult to see. I almost hear the soundtrack—the ennui of smoky jazz, a riff on lives gone stale. But still, the man’s broad back seduces me; then there’s the gun I wish I didn’t see. Jean L. Kreiling Jean L. Kreiling is the prize-winning author of two poetry collections, Arts & Letters & Love (2018) and The Truth in Dissonance (2014); her third book will appear in early 2022. She is Associate Poetry Editor of Able Muse: A Review of Poetry, Prose & Art, and a Professor Emeritus of Music at Bridgewater State University. |
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