**

Things You Should Know About Me

I am a parade of disguises – first I play your lover, then the friend. I can convince you that I’m listening when I need something from you. But I’m not a good liar when I’m afraid, which is most of the time. I look solid but I’m just a precarious arrangement of found pottery and caulking. I always wear blue and white and iron everything, from socks to dishtowels. I’m the odd one out who loves the molasses taffy leftovers from Halloween – I will gladly trade my Aero bars and Smarties. But I will steal when you’re not looking, anything you’ve touched that I can keep.

**
​
TRANSLITERATION

Batain, Jo Tumhein Mere Mutaliq Pata Honi Chahiyein

Konstantin Somov (Roos) ki musawri Chandni ka Behroop (1939) ki tarz par

Main behropoon ka aik jaloos hon. Pehle pehl main kirdar nibhati hon tumhari aashiq ka, phir dost ka. Mujhe tum se kuch chahiye ho ga toh main tumhein yaqeen dehani kera sakti hon ke main tumhari baat sunn rehi hon. Lekin main achi daroog goh nahein hon jab main deri hui hoti hon, jo ke main aksar aukat hoti hon. Lekin main sirf gare ki qalil miqdar ki terha gair yaqini hon jis se dararein band ki jati hain. Main hameshah nila aur sufaid rang pehnti hon aur joraboon aur bertan saf kerne waale toliyoon se le ker her cheez ko istari kerti hon. Main who anookha insaan hon jise Halloween ki bachi hui gur se beni mithayi bohat pasand hai aur uss ke badle khushi khushi apni Aero bars aur Smarties de don gi. Lekin main her who cheez jo tum ne aik dafa chui ho gi woh chura lon gi jab tum mutwajeh nahein ho ge.

Lorette C. Luzajic, translated by Saad Ali and Nashwa Yaqoob Butt

The English version of this poem first appeared in The Neon Rosary, by Lorette C. Luzajic (Cyberwit Books.)

​Saad Ali is a  poet-philosopher & literary translator from the UK and Pakistan. He holds a BSc and MSc in Management from the University of Leicester, UK. His new collection of poems, Owl Of Pines: Sunyata (AuthorHouse), is an homage to vers libre, prose poetry, and ekphrasis. He has translated Lorette C. Luzajic’s ekphrases into Urdu. His work appears in The Ekphrastic Review, The Mackinaw, Synchronized Chaos, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Lotus-eater, BRAWL Lit., and several anthologies, including Poetry in English from Pakistan, by Ilona Yusuf & Shafiq Naz (eds.). He has been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and Best Microfiction. Influences include Vyasa, Homer, Attar, Rumi, Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, Freud, Jung, Kafka, Tagore, Lispector and more. www.saadalipoet.com 

Nashwa Yaqoob Butt is from the Gujrat District, Pakistan. She is a teacher, social worker, and poetess. She holds an MA in Mass Communication from The Allama Iqbal Open University, Pakistan. She has authored two collections of poetry: Luminous Butterfly (2021), and Solitude: Silence and Self Identity (2023). Currently, she teaches Urdu and Social Studies at the Jinnah Public School & College. She has also been a part of a local Social Welfare Organisation for the empowerment of women in the region as a Crochet Instructor. Her influences include Rumi, Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway, Amrita Pritam, and Rabindranath Tagore. In her spare time, she pursues gardening, sketching/painting, writing, and crocheting. You can learn more on Facebook @NashwaYaqoobButt.

Under Each Rock 
an Excavation 
 
I am on a search for a word. Something like sea eagle or goose, 
perhaps French Angelfish, Bald Eagle or Emperor Penguin. 
 
How a winged word circles back, meaning enfolds meaning embraces. I am on a
search for a word, a winter wrap-around, like cashmere or horsehair. I remember
our horse-driven sleigh ride through Central Park. We roomed at the Plaza. There
were chandeliers in the bathrooms. Can you think of a word? 
 
It doesn’t have to be fancy or have many syllables. It need not be a rare gem: Pinite,
Tanzanite, Red Beryl, Black Opal (creamy white with exploding inner hues) or
even Alexandrite. It could be as simple as a tablecloth or birthday hat
or handkerchief (linen, embroidered with initials). It could be as convoluted as a
slinky. 
 
Particulars: Am I seeking a Hollywood noun-star? Can I lasso a modifier or verb & 
what tense? I have a fondness for past-perfect because my past is so im(perfect). On
pre-arranged rocks I perch & watch the Etobicoke Creek swerving deep brown,
having to do with mud and sediment dredged— 
 
Having to do with mud and sentiment. Why does a river rush when it has company
for dinner including one chatty forest and four dogs meandering? Is the word
meander? Or are there words, not just one, random stars strung together like a
necklace or bracelet or balanced like a stacked stone sculpture. Or not a word,
instead, an image? The way, when I remove my glasses, stars show themselves in
the stream umbra brown (not the stars— fluorescent white with wingtips depending
on how light rays strike). Do hues strike and wound? 
 
Is there a word for when my heart is about to pounce, that moment before so tightly
wound, before the hunt before the prey, before I came to sit here at Etobicoke Creek
with four dogs of different hues & head shapes, according to whim, according to
fancy. Whimsy is also a word. 
 
Whimsy is the way I sit on this rock-stack randomly arranged, while canines bark
across the creek. We thought we were alone. Beneath these rocks shaped like a
whale’s fin or imprinted with the Blue Heron’s toe stalks or mollusc. Under each
rock is a word. I am going to excavate words. Maybe an expression, something you
share with stars or creeks or canines, a string of words that warms and elicits
laughter. That warms like a Mylar thermal blanket for first aid kits & natural
disasters to retain body heat and maintain warmth (pack of 10) meaning
hypothermia (physical or psychological) which can be symptomatic of word-
deficiency or prolonged hunger for the right word⎯

The heart freezes over or so it seems. I used to watch the minnows pooling. In this
creek where the water is clear & swirls around my ankles, circles swim around my
shins. Now, the creek’s mud-guts (scraped from an epithelial once smooth) in
swarms racing over the creek’s surface swell, a mob that loots young saplings,
flattens bedrock. Once I hailed forest footprints by name: Northern Otter, Redhead
Duck, Snowshoe Hare. 
 
What are the three types of haemorrhage? arterial bleeding / venous /
bleeding capillary in spurts or flows steadily or trickles / from the body
bleeding from arteries & veins. My mind thick as mud, wilful, woebegone
& raging, arterial also venous. Farewell, my umwelt as I lean into the
ambiance of rock, river, tree, Maple or Sycamore beside-me-now almost
bent, broken nearly. In my garden lives a community where stems pop
when there is hurt when there is hunger. Today the giant Hosta in my
garden is dying. 
 
My son-in-law is a philosopher. My younger daughter, a poet. My eldest sings, full
voice, crescendo. I am Sea Eagle, sometimes Goose or French Angelfish, 
Bald Eagle, Emperor Penguin. I am the forest loquacious, whale’s fin, mollusc,
meandering canine. I am the swell, footprints fading or forgotten, Blue Heron with
long legs and thin searching toes. Umgebungen is another word. 
 
The outer world, so fragile. The bear resides in a wood & an amoeba lives in a
pond. The bear lacks the ability to see the amoeba; the amoeba, the ability to see the
bear. Neither can see the Umgebung. My grandmother wore a cotton corset. 
Channeling is the fabric that encases the boning in a corset. When I unfasten
the cinchier of my own umwelt, I waver. Then I enter yours. ​

Janice Colman

Born in Montreal in 1948, Janice Colman is an emerging Toronto poet, Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Martha Award recipient, and a two-time Toronto Arts Council grant recipient. Her work has been published in the temz Review, filling Station, Arc, long con Magazine, The New Quarterly, Freefall Magazine, and Over/Exposed Lit. Janice is the mother of two powerful daughters and the human guide of an 8-dog trail-hiking pack. 

Still Life, Reviving 
​
Fruit whirl, speeding planets 
        around a flame  -- peach,
mango, tangerine, strawberries,
        kumquat, apples, pomegranate.
Some burst in the outer orbit,
        spew their seed. Below, 
eight pewter plates fly 
        off a swirl of cloth. This supper 
not complete. No utensils, no place 
        to put the peels. We eat them,
eat even the seeds and the pith,
        suck sweet juice in this place -- its old
clerestory walls, the one grimed
        window dark, unglazed, 
letting mosquitos in, letting
        the damp nourish stringy vines
that bear tiny red blossoms: 
        promises. 
​
Stephanie Pressman

A graphic artist and lifelong poet, Stephanie Pressman earned an MA in English from San Jose State University, taught writing at community college, and is the editor of the small press, Frog on the Moon. She served as co-editor of Cæsura and americas review. Her work has appeared in both print and online journals. Her poem “Self” was a finalist in The Ekphrastic Review’s 2021 Women Artists Contest. Her long poem Lovebirdman appears in an illustrated volume available on Amazon. Currently, she is working on a volume of ekphrastic poetry featuring women artists, many of whom she was unfamiliar with before beginning the project.

 
Paleo Truleo
 
Clay man waits for ancestor to come.
Blue clay on his skin, flaking.
Waits a long time.
 
Clay jar a crude hive on his head.
Holes for breathing.
Whisk of magic leaves in his hand.
 
He is Quiet, awaiting the whisper
when old one comes.
To tell.  To command. To sing.
 
Inside his mask 
is the center of the world.
Where Silence is the heart’s thunder.
 
He is practicing an uncertain word.
To still the hammer of his pulse
in the jar.  To mend his stammer.
 
He awaits the invention of ink.
Singing to himself.  No self.
Cry like a rainy day.
 
Daniel Lusk

This poem first appeared in Every Slow Thing, by Daniel Lusk, from Kelsay Books.

Daniel Lusk is author of eight poetry collections and other books. His work is published widely in literary journals, and his genre-bending essay “Bomb” (New Letters), was awarded a 2016 Pushcart Prize. Native of the prairie Midwest and former commentator on small press books for NPR, he lives in Vermont with his wife, Irish poet Angela Patten.

A Ramble on the Painting Who’s Afraid of Vanessa Bell? by Pennie Brantley (1985)
 
The empty chair in the empty room is like my mind lately. Emptiness upon emptiness. It’s not enough to not be in the empty room – I must not be sitting in the empty chair. Maybe the robe signifies my having been there and gone. Maybe it wasn’t even me. Maybe it was what I wanted it to be. A mind devoid of any substance or pain, empty of emotion or confusion. A world ready to be filled with laughter and understanding. So much promise but not until the room is cleaned out. Maybe the robe signifies my shell trying to hang on. Trying to maintain my presence in the room – in the world – in my mind. I want to furnish the room with bright objects, interesting artifacts, happy people, my younger self. But when I look into my catalog all I find is broken furniture, rusty fixtures, torn drapes. A life well lived but now in need of serious repair. I don’t know if I’ll make it back to that chair but I know it will wait for me. Always sitting in the empty room that is my mind, my life. We all have our chairs and our rooms. We try to use them as they were meant to be used. We don’t always succeed and we always get older but the chair is always there in the room, not wanting to be empty.

Mike Goodwin

Mike Goodwin is a retired high school mathematics teacher who  recently became interested in writing poetry as a result of attending workshops on ekphrastic writing at the local art museum. 

Venus  - After the Bath
 
Why hide, Venus?
Behind that curtain
or tablecloth.
Edged in gold
giving off a sheen
glistening, like an oiled body
shimmers.
 
You balance
on one slender foot
around which sweet flowers push
coaxed into existence
by your breath.
 
You tease, twisting
up your long golden locks
voluptuously
over a plump
golden arm.
 
Is your beauty too strong
for our unshielded eyes?
Or is that whiteness
a disguise for an aging, unbalanced goddess                                   
with shadows and folds
now as grey and deep
as that concealing sheet?
​
​Cynthia Storrs

​Cynthia Storrs teaches, writes, and paints in Nashville, TN.  Educated in the US and UK, she has served on the board of Poetry West (CO), Pikes Peak Poet Laureate Committee, the Pikes Peak Arts Council, and now on the Board of the Poetry Society of Tennessee. Her poetry has been published in three anthologies, Critique, Tennessee, and on-line. She has also published scholarly articles on bilingualism, biculturalism, and acculturation. Cynthia loves art history, theatre, landscape painting, and chocolate.  ​

David Hockney, Yorkshire  Paintings

God knows, you’ve travelled landscapes.
Or riverscapes, hillscapes, flowerscapes. 

Across canvas, paper. By oil or wash.
Each the invitation to gaze, to prospect. 

Claude coast.
​
Constable pond.

Van Gogh field.

Cézanne mountain.
​
Now it’s dale, moor, riding.
English north. Plein Air Yorkshire.

You’ve been to California for the splash
You’ve seen the Ipad plants and vases.  

Now it’s the boy from Bradford.
Home again from Sixties to Postmodern.   

Just look at the Sledmere multi-colour.
Curvilinear brushstroke, pigment brilliance.  

Contemplate the Kilham watercolour.  
Parked street at rest in discreet white, pink.  

Level your eye at Huggate summer.
Fringe grass, sloped hill breasts.  

These, the others, speak memory.
Paths, wheatfield, bower, hill.

These, the others, speak colour.
Meadow, treetop, sunlight, snow.

These, the others, speak brush, palette.   
Hyper pastel, Hockney’s inside landscape. 

​A. Robert Lee

A. Robert Lee’s creative writings include Japan Textures: Sight and Word, with Mark Gresham (2007), Tokyo Commute (2011), Ars Geographica: Maps and Compasses (2012), Portrait and Landscape: Further Geographies (2013),Imaginarium: Sightings, Galleries, Sightlines (2013), Americas (2015), Off Course: Roundabouts & Deviations (2016), Password: A Book of Locks and Keys (2016), Written Eye: Visuals/Verse (2017), Alunizaje/Lunar Landings, with Blas Miras,  Writer Directory: A Book of Encounters (2019), Daylong, Nightlong: 24 Hour Poetry (2020), Suspicious Circumstances (2020), Time Travels (2022), Outside In: Hinges and Swivels (2022), Almost Patagonia (2023), and Everywhere You Look (2024).

Very excited about the upcoming Ekphrastic Flash Fiction course with Women on Writing.  You won't want to miss this deep dive into ekphrasis and the small story. In this five week course, you will discover how to mine visual art for themes, characters, setting, and narrative, and bring unexpected stories to life. Zoom classes with discussion on ekphrasis, art, and story examples, and responses on your stories.

Find more info or register here:
https://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/classroom/LoretteLuzajic_EkphrasticFlashFiction.html


Testimonials from other Women on Writing courses with Lorette:

"Lorette's enthusiasm and wealth of knowledge about art combine to make her one of the most exciting and empowering workshop leaders I have ever had the joy of writing with. And the Hyperbole police would not arrest me for saying that!  I was exposed to art I would never have looked twice at, and have learned how to linger and engage with the work and the artist. Her preparation, presentations and written feedback were thoughtful, generous and encouraging. an absolute delight!"
Susie Whelehan

Lorette is one of the most vibrant, enthusiastic, and knowledgeable workshop leaders I’ve encountered, and I’ve worked with about a dozen of the top poets in the U.S., including Naomi Shihab Nye, Ted Kooser, and Jane Hirshfield.
Alarie T.

“Lorette’s course provides a multitude of opportunities to practice the craft of writing in a supportive, non-judgmental setting.  In four weeks, my confidence grew and my creativity blossomed.”
Allison C.

“This definitely fulfilled the wow factor- already in the first class.”
Elissa G.

There are two other courses with WOW! later this fall. You can view more information or register for them at the following links:

Ekphrastic Poetry: Exploring Visual Art by Women
https://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/classroom/LoretteLuzajic_EkphrasticPoetry.html

Writing Through Illness and Chronic Pain:
https://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/classroom/LoretteLuzajic_WritingThroughIllness.html