Erasure
 
"It’s not negation, it’s a celebration. It’s just the idea." 
Robert Rauschenberg
  
To experience an after, there must have been a before. Though it isn’t pure absence; it’s the near absence, the almost but not quite essence, we feel. There’s a time element, too, tinged with regret for not taking notice earlier. This looking without seeing haunts us like a ghost, like an unintelligible whisper. Only part of a vivid dream crosses the threshold into daylight. Someone is very busy with an eraser working to remove every trace. We fall back on what we know of objects and shadows. If shadows exist, then there must be corresponding objects. But here, there are no definable objects, only shadows. The picture frame corrals our attention. We should seriously consider what is enclosed. And yet without the artwork’s inscription we would never know what was missing. Like the scent of cologne in a vacant drawer, it conjures the memory of a lost love down to the pulse points and texture of their skin. The invitation stands, come pilot the empty.  
 
Cherie Hunter Day

Cherie Hunter Day lives in Auburn, New Hampshire, near Massabesic Lake. her work has appeared in Mid-American Review, Moon City Review, Rust & Moth, and Unbroken, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize  and Best Microfiction anthologies. Her most recent collection, A House Meant Only for Summer (Red Moon Press, 2023) features haibun and tanka prose. When not writing poetry and micro prose, or making collages, she is outside exploring the woods and avoiding ticks.

Their Room
 
Some would call it bland, the plain weathered door,
but I recall how his gnarled hands planed the curling
strips of oak as it lay across sawhorses, how he joined
and hung the sanded boards on mortised hinges,
snugged pins in hinge-holes to help
the door swing free of creaks.
 
Inside, the table is elbow-scuffed to a dull brown,
adorned only by a conch whose geometry
invites me to cup then press it
 
against the echo-chamber of my ear.
Fifty years later I can't resist lifting it--
and strain to hear their voices, too,
 
though both are gone decades now. Memories
hazed, like once beige walls aged to taupe,
neither brown nor gray. Here, contrast is subtle
 
in faded curtains of pale pink taffeta
that grandmother stitched by lamplight,
hung to hurry along springtime.
 
The blizzard left windows trousered with snow
so deep the door had to be taken off to dig out.
Someone left the door open today,
 
and light burnishes the old wood like laughter,
like the whispering whoosh in the conch,
and the soft touch of the silent door closing.
 
Nancy Sobanik
 
Nancy Sobanik is a Registered Nurse who started writing in 2020, and is learning poetics through workshops, study and the feedback of generous poet friends. She was awarded second place in the Belfast Maine Postmark Poetry Contest 2023, and is currently a 2024 finalist. Her poems can be found in Sparks of Calliope- Best of The Net Nominee 2023 and Pushcart Nomination 2024, Triggerfish Critical Review, and Sheila-Na-Gig. Maine is her playground and home.
 
 

Safe Light

I am curious how one colour can mean opposing things: safe and sorry. How it can be a signal to stop and one to go. How it can mean the unfathomable. Amber was introduced as a safelight in the darkroom in Paris in 1841. On the street between red and green in Detroit in 1920. And as an alert nationwide in 1996 after the death of a girl. In the Stone Age, amber was a gem.

I am ten today and at my party receive the gift of my mother’s presence and from her a camera wrapped with ribbon. What surprises me more? I hold the black plastic box, slide open the lens cover and start to take snapshots like my grandfather did before he died when I was four. In them, my uncle grins, my aunt glowers. My cousins gaze uncertain from their bikes. Kids aren’t supposed to have cameras in Jamestown. Nana, in profile: the line of her back repeats that of her hair, curved from a visit to Carm’s for the occasion. 

I am in a crowd of strangers in a darkroom lit by warm light. Big black machines lurch on the perimeter, each in its own station. My peers’ skin, the colour of death. Standing corpses around a stainless steel sink of trays and tongs. Is anyone as afraid as I am? Numbers and timers, mixtures and math. What are ratios, anyway? Long ago I was told I couldn’t learn. I do want to, but leave with the list of materials I can’t afford. Why don’t you become a secretary? I hear my grandmother’s voice from years before in the whirl of the revolving door. It follows me onto the New York City streets. How will you live?

I am in spotlight on stage, a master of something after just two years. The audience is full and empty. What I know is that I barely know a thing. What I know is that I needed my name in calligraphic letters to lay claim to who I already was. To show the results of a hearing test. That I listened to myself. A license on bond paper. Textured and vulnerable. But safe to proceed. 

I am standing in safety underneath an amber light that in this small space means go not slow. The chemistry is intoxicating. I want to inhale it, drink it, bathe myself in it as a homecoming celebration in this Oklahoman home far from home where I belong and don’t belong and where I’ve been born a photographer all over again. A lone wolf teaching photography in Lone Wolf.

​​Janelle Lynch

Janelle Lynch is a writer and an award-winning photographer. Her writing has been published in monographs and in journals including Afterimage, The Photo Review, and Loupe. Her photographs have been exhibited worldwide and are in several museum collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Victoria and Albert Museum; and the Denver Art Museum. She has three monographs published by Radius Books: Los Jardines de México (2010); Barcelona (2012), which also includes her writings; and Another Way of Looking at Love (2018). She is a faculty member at the International Center of Photography and is represented by Flowers Gallery.

When Fireflies Speak The Language Of Love
                        
after Fireflies on the Water, by Yayoi Kusama (Japan) 2002
 
Aren't these flickering lights at dusk a magical gift of hot summer nights, 
also called lantern fly, sparkling like fallen stars on hot summer nights?
 
As thousands of lanterns set afloat to reach departed souls, guiding spirits
through the darkness, they speak in silent sign language on hot summer nights.
 
I think of candles lit inside votive lotus-shaped lanterns as I watch rows of
quivering lights desperately glued onto window panes on hot summer nights.
 
In an intermittent flutter, an electric shock echoing my musings, fireflies speak
the language of love, an inaudible music in the stillness of hot summer nights.
 
With bright names formed around light and fire, luciole, lucciole, luciérnaga, 
pygolampída, Yínghuǒchóng, zubabat el nar, they dance on hot summer nights,
 
echo lovers' wordless encounters with all their variations, conjuring up lost faces,
recalling all the shining promises my younger self dreamt of on hot summer nights 
 
Hedy Habra
 
First published by Nūr Mélange: a ghazal anthology, Quitab Editions
 
Hedy Habra

Hedy Habra's latest poetry collection, Or Did You Ever See The Other Side? won the 2024 International Poetry Book Award and was a Finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award and The USA Best Book Awards. The Taste of the Earth, won the Silver Nautilus Book Award and Honorable Mention for the Eric Hoffer Book Award; Tea in Heliopolis won the Best Poetry Book Award and Under Brushstrokes was a finalist for the International Poetry Book Award. Her story collection, Flying Carpets, won the Arab American Book Award’s Honorable Mention and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award. Her book of criticism is Mundos alternos y artísticos en Vargas Llosa, She is a twenty one-time-nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. https://www.hedyhabra.com/

​The Lesser-Known Riddle of the Sphinx

                                         There are two sisters: one gives birth to the other. She, in turn gives birth
                                         to the first. Who are the sisters?

My sister & I rarely talk about it
that hazy time we were small

Mom was crying on her bed
we stood at the foot of it in wonder

something gone wrong with the pregnancy.
Later we learned she had named the baby Mary Ellen

after whom, we didn’t know, Donna & I
named for grandmothers in Asia Minor

& so, by twist of fate, a ghost trio,
our sister’s remains buried

in an Orthodox cemetery we never went to
on the other side of town.


*

The first time Donna takes me
to the museum to view the sculpture

I feel the pulse of something lost:
baptismal cross, a gold ring

a missing limb. Stargazer, I stare
at your mystery, hair as short as mine.

Samson after Delilah & you have survived,
the tender slope of your shoulders

holds up the air: Atlas before Atlas
your DNA, my inheritance scripted

in marble. You are naked
& I merely mortal.

*

Dad loved repeating to us kids
the Riddle of the Sphinx:

Which is the creature
that has one voice
four feet in the morning
two feet in the afternoon
three feet at night?

A simple equation & impossible mathematics.
Years later I find a second riddle.

We chased each other around the yard
day & night.

Anastasia Vassos

Anastasia Vassos grew up in Cleveland. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets. She is the author of Nostos (2023) and Nike Adjusting Her Sandal (2021). Find her work in RHINO, Whale Road Review, Thrush, Comstock Review, and elsewhere. She is a reader for Lily Poetry Review, speaks three languages, and lives in Boston.

What You Don’t See Is What You Get : A Review of White Fence

**

White Fence: An Ekphrastic Collaboration Across Ten Images 
Alan Basting, Paul Deblinger, Marilyn Hedgpeth, Bruce Metge on photography by  Paula Siwek
​Window Press, 2024
https://windowpress.org/products/white-fence-an-ekphrastic-collaboration-across-ten-images

**
​
For me, the most inspiring literary discussions are those, like symposia, in which a group of experts are provided a compelling question or issue and then each panelist responds in turn, not only to the topic but to each other. Such is one of the beauties of the book White Fence: An Ekphrastic Collaboration Across Ten Images (Window Press, 2024).

Consider Paula Siwek’s ten photographic works to be compelling questions and present one each week to four master poets for their consideration and reflection—that is, as prompts for poems generated by those images (in “ekphrastic” manner)—and you have the potential for the kind of transformative exchange, or artistry, that the best symposium is capable of. You have a White Fence.

What can be more compelling than a weathered privacy fence with one small slat missing, a narrow opening through which you can see in the distance a line of trees bordering a grassy field and, closer, the back of a metal folding chair? Or a black and white photo of a girl, her back to us, sitting in a patch of sunlight and shadow, her sandals off, a stick held upright in her right hand, seemingly unaware of the blurry “happy camping” activities going on in the distance? (It’s title Hoola Hoop, is alone worthy of contemplation and suggestion.) Or the shocking red brilliance of curly hair on a woman seemingly caught up in distant—swirling green and yellow—contemplations? Or a pictograph drawn or chalked on what appears to be urban cement, depicting several red-haired nudes (The Muses?) dancing in a circle, as if around an imaginary maypole? 

“Every picture tells a story,” Rod Stewart reminded us back in the day—a time in my life I don’t care to elaborate on here, except to acknowledge that even some fifty years later the song can stir up a dialectic of both difficult and pleasant memories, youthful moments of questioning and discovery, of love and loss, of solitude and society, of myth and memory. It was a time of conflicting attractions, during which I could find equally enticing an awkward, sweaty embrace of a stranger in a crowded high school gym or dancing alone, naked, “grotesquely / before my mirror” (as W.C. Williams’ describes in “Danse Russe”). That is, moments equally worthy of a story or a poem. And therein is yet another beauty of White Fence, for Siwek’s images have roused such reflections, mirror-like, of myth and memory in the four poets represented in the book: Alan Basting, Paul Deblinger, Marilyn Hedgpeth, and Bruce Metge. 

Deblinger in particular tends toward narrative in his poetry. Siwek’s Red Hair, for instance, stirs up the poet’s memory of watching Secretariat run in the Preakness—a flash of colour that so transcends shade or hue that it defines itself as uniquely thoroughbred: Big Red. (Red, in point of fact, is one of the unifying devices within White Fence; the color, as well as the word’s homophone, reappears in imagistic or metaphoric ambiguity—if not outright punning—throughout the book.) “There are two kinds of red for me now,” Deblinger concludes,

            all those ordinary reds
            and the red trying to tell me it belonged
            in my universe . . .   

A universe, as the other poets in White Fence will attest, that may be mythical and mysterious yet is nonetheless rooted in the immediacy (intimacy) of our dailiness, which, for the poet Marilyn Hedgpeth, means a life-long dedication to all things spiritual. Whereas Hedgpeth’s bio claims that she is a “retired” Minister of Word and Sacrament for the Presbyterian Church, her poetry continues a religious mission—to consider the manifestations of Being in the things and language of the world. In response to Siwek’s Initiation Triptych, an image that seems to meld forces of sky (lightning), water (ocean), and earth (body), Hedgpeth’s poem “Orenda” (a Haudenosaunee term defined as “the collective power of nature’s energies”) describes how the photograph seems to capture “heaven’s thunderbird” releasing its living energy from that trinity, “enraging the sea / its song a collective moan / our cry a prayer.”

Thus these poets remind us that the possibilities for knowledge (enlightenment) are endless, given the imagination, and yet our bodies have learned to speak in more sensory ways as well, as Alan Basting proves, in his more physically grounded approach to Siwek’s artistry. In his poem “Joining the Movement,” based upon Red Headed Dance, Basting begins with a simple description of the image itself: “The redheaded ladies began dancing / in circles. Light pooled under their feet.” Then he is drawn into it (a necessary pun, forgive me) and concludes:

            Each held arms out to touch sea mist,
            then fingertips of sisters before and behind them,

            a garland of naked females, each lovely
            and perfect: flowers of form and movement,

            petals so beautiful, I wished
            to bury my face in their fragrance.    
        
Bruce Metge’s poems also have a physical intimacy and narrative, and yet at times it is the image itself speaking—or a persona speaking out of the image—thus presenting a truly ekphrastic dialogue, the language of art. Reflecting on the book’s title image, the speaker in “Woods and Fences” first considers what the white fence is hiding or keeping the poet away from—the shelter of the trees, its welcome silence, the sun’s warmth—and how a neighbour’s desire to build a fence “for his privacy” transforms not only the woods (which the neighbor cuts to make lumber) but also the speaker’s memory of nature’s inherent pleasures. And yet, the narrow opening left “between two planks” appears to be intentional on the neighbor’s part, providing, perhaps, a glimpse of his human nature. “[P]erhaps to keep a view of the pines beyond,” writes Metge, “where true tranquility makes its home.”

Printed in a hardcover format (approx. 9 x 10 inches) with high quality paper and striking design, White Fence has all the aesthetic qualities and textures to make a wonderful coffee table book. (Or collector’s showcase: A deluxe, limited edition of 26 copies signed by the artists includes an original Siwek image not found in the volume.) But it would be a shame for White Fence to be treated as simply book art, that is, for us to admire it solely for its lovely images and presentation. White Fence is, after all, a book of gorgeous poetry, a book to spend time with, to return to over and again—as I did—stimulated not only by the questions the images raise, but by the answers the poets provide, as well as the compelling additional questions of artistry and humanity that the poems will continue to ask. 

Phillip Sterling

Phillip Sterling’s most recent books are Lessons in Geography: The Education of a Michigan Poet (essays/memoir, Cornerstone Press) and Local Congregation: Poems Uncollected 1985-2015 (Main Street Rag). He served as program coordinator and juror for WordView: Art Inspiring Art, an exhibit of artwork incorporating both visual and textual elements, presented by LowellArts (Lowell, MI) in 2022. 
 
 
 

Join  us in December for The Art of the Madonna, to learn about Mary in the history of art. In the new year, blast away the winter blahs with a wine and art write night using Tarot for creative inspiration. Plus, Leonora Carrington, the pre-Raphaelites, The Erotic Muse, AND....special gift certificates so your friends can try our fabulous workshops. Treat your friends AND support The Ekphrastic Review! We want to continue bringing ekphrasis to the world every day, and continue inspiring writers with our unique, interactive community workshops on art appreciation and writing.

​Thank you so much.

Click here to see what's coming up:

https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrasticwritingworkshops.html

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"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. No one should get bored by coming back again and again. It’s amazing how she keeps the topic fresh: always varied, always full of more prompts and resources to check, and most important of all, always welcoming to everyone who shows up."
Alarie T.

"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

"In 2024, while dealing with a serious medical condition, I've taken a wild ride with Lorette C. Luzajic and The Ekphrastic Review--workshops, Facebook marathons, biweekly challenges. Writing in response to art is helping me heal at the soul level, and for that, I am forever grateful to Lorette and the team at The Ekphrastic Review."
Barbara K.

​For Clementine Hunter

Strung gourds choke up out of earth, out
from loam the tinge of ecstasy at dusk.
Eyes filmed over prophesy in smoke 
as cyclopes score a music of mule sweat, 
chink the blackest eaves with cooled off
Sun’s blood, blinking come, caution.

Ripple, crumble, fade, aching
over barrow handles,
bandanaed, powdered, stewing
a week’s caked vestments far from shade.
The grass is green with killing,
the scalded earth watered with pig shrieks
spilled from the black, oak-shrouded cauldron
where unease curls in whispers,
smiling to vine the lustrous pickets.

Do not let the earth undo what dares,
slide splayed and craving from the furrow
that is yours. Let the little bites 
chime the garden gate and teach
a song too deep for melody. 
That’s us in the ground, in the ground, crying.

​Daniel Fitzpatrick

This poem was inspired by Harvesting Gourds near the African House and Wash Day Near Ghana House, Melrose Plantation, by Clementine Hunter (USA)  1959.
https://noma.org/clementine-hunter-mural/
​
Daniel Fitzpatrick is the author of two novels and two poetry collections. He is a member of the creative assembly at the New Orleans Museum of Art. He edits a journal called Joie de Vivre.

Will She Be Able To Concoct A Potion Steeped With Her Inner Thoughts?
                                                                        After The Call by Remedios Varo
 
She wants to step out of the valley of slumber, open her eyes wide to reach the stars,
dreams of letting her hair flow in the wind, see it rise in a fiery swirl to reach the stars. 
 
A spark in her heart grows into a flame that keeps her warm. She discards handed down
ideas would rather gather and grind herbs to form an elixir of liberation to reach the stars, 
 
wants her flame to swell, refuses to be immured like her elders who dwell for hours over
a new recipe for their husbands, become the perfect housewife unable to reach the stars. 
 
She needs to move like fire, water, and wind, refuses to be trapped inside the bark,
wants to rise in the cosmos, sublimate, swim towards unknown shores to reach the stars,
 
yearns to rest under the shade of palm trees, pine trees, bamboo, banyans, or a sequoia,
aware that leaves await the wind's caress to unleash emotions that would reach the stars.
 
She wishes to concoct a potion steeped with her inner thoughts and sprinkle it with fine 
mica and crystal dust till its shifting shapes reveal the answer to her quest to reach the stars.
 
When my mom stopped painting for lack of an art space, I'd see her bent over lampshades, 
vases, pottery, ceramic, mirrors, and small boxes, turning them into canvases to reach the stars. 
 
Hedy Habra

This was first published by Nūr Mélange: a ghazal anthology, Quitab Editions.

Hedy Habra's latest poetry collection, Or Did You Ever See The Other Side? won the 2024 International Poetry Book Award and was a Finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award and The USA Best Book Awards. The Taste of the Earth, won the Silver Nautilus Book Award and Honorable Mention for the Eric Hoffer Book Award; Tea in Heliopolis won the Best Poetry Book Award and Under Brushstrokes was a finalist for the International Poetry Book Award. Her story collection, Flying Carpets, won the Arab American Book Award’s Honorable Mention and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award. Her book of criticism is Mundos alternos y artísticos en Vargas Llosa, She is a twenty one-time-nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. https://www.hedyhabra.com/