Walking in Paris is a Long Sentence

Today I was walking – no it was yesterday or maybe was last year – when I crossed the city south to north, east to west, every day, I mean I wandered, my pace unhurried as I took pictures of people, buildings, cars, and mostly evrrything on my way while I asked myself why I do that, why I walk so much, why do I watch so much, stare at every passerby and it was somewhere while I ambled between one block and the next that it struck me how we like to live in villages within the city life, an observation I came upon when I passed a crowd of women clad in bright orange, intense yellows and green flowered and flowing garbs, their heads covered, pushing strollers while speaking in loud voices, a language that I could hear well but couldn’t understand, a patois perhaps from another land, but this was Paris where I happened to be at the time, and then I passed several stores with stiff men, standing straight in their entrances, dressed in tailored suits, mirrors of ambition, lies covering their plastic pink skins, molded golden wigs for the mannequins hair, while the store owners were dark, and beyond those stores, the next ones had their vitrines full of white tulles for the brides, long dresses embroidered with garish pearls, bright white, and I kept moving, strolling through more blocks encountering now many people walking their small dogs, couples hand in hand, their face concealed with floppy brimmed hats avoiding the sun, khaki pants, most of them were pale, spoke in low whispers, in Queen approved English or plaited, strand by strand, French into their breath while they looked at the store windows crammed with stiff chotchkes or whatever they call these decorations that people like but have no actual use for, these stores owners were white, the clerks behind the counters were dark and I kept going through the streets full of noise, ambulances, police cars their red lights on, the smells of dead fish, grilled meat and cooked salmon, kebabs, and falafel, jasmine rice, tabbouleh, momo, thukpa and gyurma steaming from open stalls next to boulangeries and viennoiseries, and I stopped there and chose one of each fare: shrimp atop wilted spinach, roasted pumpkin, a fresh baguette and a pain au chocolate, took a seat on a high chair besides a tall round and varnished wooden table, scratched with blue, red and yellow dogs and cats,  children’s drawings reflecting the afternoon sun.

Maria Caponi

Maria Caponi was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina. An only child with a vivid imagination, she spent much of her childhood inventing stories and working on mathematical equations. She has a Ph.D. in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Maryland and a Certificate of Creative Fiction Writing with honours from the University of California, Los Angeles. Maria has lived in Los Angeles since her late twenties. Her memoir, An Accidental Pilgrim, a memoir in prose and verse, was published in 2024. She’s currently completing a collection of personal essays and poems. More details about her work and interests can be found at https://mariacaponi.com/

​The Fair
 
He saves up money all summer 
hoping his mother will slip him 
an extra dollar or two. 
Off with his brothers and cousins 
cutting through yards
hints of winter teasing 
his one-square mile Vermont town.
 
At the edge of the fairgrounds 
they jump the fence
make their way to the barns
familiar smell of manure
to inspect blue ribbon hopefuls
cows, pigs, chickens.
 
Taking a seat in the grandstands
inhaling the aroma of hot dogs
he unwraps his peanut butter sandwich
coins pooled for a shared bag of fries
attention turns to the demo derby
and dare-devil stunt car drivers.
 
They dash to the midway, 
hands in pockets jiggling loose change
ready to part with it for the rides
especially the dive bomber. 
Smiles and screams
running along dusty paths
from one ride to the next.
 
Dusk reveals colourful bright lights 
outlining the shapes of the rides
music of the carousel fading
skies darken as they amble home 
tired, empty pockets, glancing back
at blinking, flashing colours 
he will remember for years.
 
Lois Perch Villemaire

This poem was first published at Cabochon Review.

Lois Perch Villemaire is a poet and collage artist from Annapolis, MD. She is the author of My Eight Greats and Eyes at the Edge of the Woods. Her work has appeared in a number of anthologies, journals, and magazines both in-print and online. Last Leaves, Thimble Literary Magazine, and Anti Heroin Chic have published her artwork. Lois is a contributing writer to AARP-The Ethel. A Pushcart nominee, she works part time at the public library and propagates African violets. Recently, she became a proud great-grandmother to twin boys.

​                       
Oroshi (Wind blowing down from the mountain), by Kino Satoshi (Japan) 2016                                        
http://64.136.229.66:8081/search/Satoshi  

Undulating Breezes
      
The wind blowing down the side of a mountain provides cooling relief in the suffocating heat of summer.  I press my face against a piece of glazed porcelain, feeling the smooth surface become warm, savoring the comforting cold.  Sometimes, the wind cascading down the side of a mountain becomes fierce and intense, causing storms and creating damage.  Perhaps the undulating nature of a wave attracts us.  Dynamic change offers more opportunities than static comfort, yet we long for stability, for something upon which we can always rely.  My mother set my hair in large rollers to pull out the curl when I was a young girl, while I concentrated upon reading a book.  My hair resisted all attempts to straighten it, with great determination.  I studied sine and cosine waves in junior high, realizing they continued indefinitely, toward infinity,  I appreciate curls, these days.  Their shape possesses so much potential.  The wind, an unfurling curl, undulates down the mountain.  Undulating, undulating, and always undulating.  Will it provide comforting coolness or destruction?  Regrettably, we cannot decide.  

Cascading breezes
bring coolness in summer, and
sometimes destruction.  

**

Undulating Breezes
        
The wind blowing down the side of a mountain provides cooling relief in the suffocating heat of summer.  I press my face against a piece of glazed porcelain, feeling the smooth surface become warm, savoring the comforting cold.  Sometimes, the wind cascading down the side of a mountain becomes fierce and intense, causing storms and creating damage.  Perhaps the undulating nature of a wave attracts us.  Dynamic change offers more opportunities than static comfort, yet we long for stability, for constancy, for reliability.  Lightest of greens and lightest of blues, combined, neither one dominating.  A color labeled celadon, similar to aquamarine, a hue I had seldom seen in nature, yet it comforted and relaxed me.  My mother set my hair in large rollers to pull out the curl when I was a young girl, while I concentrated upon reading a book.  My hair resisted all attempts to straighten it, with great determination.  I studied sine and cosine waves in junior high, admiring that they continued indefinitely, toward infinity.  I consumed curls of carrots in salads, delighting in their fresh crunchiness.  I appreciate curls, these days.  Their shape possesses so much potential.  The wind, an unfurling curl, undulated down the mountain.  Undulating, undulating, and always undulating.  Will it provide comforting coolness or destruction?  Regrettably, we cannot decide.  

Porcelain, smooth, cool, 
comforting, evokes mountain
breezes cascading.  

Renée Szostek 

Renée Szostek is a Tau Beta Pi, Mortar Board, and Honors College graduate of Michigan State University, and a Sigma Xi graduate of the University of Iowa.  She earned master's degrees from Northwestern University and Yale, and was Student Editor for the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine.  She won first, second, and third place for haiku in the Penumbra Poetry and Haiku Contest, second and third place in the Southern Shakespeare Sonnet Contest, second prize, third prize (twice), and honourable mention for poetry in the Westminster Art Festival, and "Haiku of the Week" four times from Arts at Michigan.  

Sister Tubman
 
after Untitled (Harriet Tubman), by Elizabeth Catlett (Mexico, b. USA) 1953
​https://www.nga.gov/artworks/143191-untitled-harriet-tubman

Git in formation, Harriet growls.
How could she have known that, centuries later, a woman named Beyoncé would sing those very words. Sing, not snarl-as Harriet is want to do. Singing, Harriet knows nothing about that. Her reality is shepherding parcels of Negroes out the hellhole of slavery to safety’s gallery up North. She reserves her gun for surly slave catchers, for hungry dogs that won’t back down, for any wild critters they stumble upon, for folks who imagine they can simply change their minds mid-stream and turn back, and for any man who is part of her parcel and can’t see fit to follow a woman’s orders. She sleeps with one eye open.

Joanne Godley

Godley is a thrice-nominated Pushcart and Best-of-Net poet, writer, and recent MFA graduate from Pacific University. She is a retired physician and public health specialist, who immigrated to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico with her puppy, Jazz. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Decolonial Passage, The Kenyon Review Online, among others. How the Black Panthers Fell From the Sky, is a memoir-in-verse and Godley’s first poetry collection. It won the Naomi Long Madgett award for 2025 and has just been published by Broadside Lotus Press. 

What's the deal with Cy Twombly?

Polarizing American painter is considered one of the greatest artists of the 20th centuries...and one of the worst. 

He was a walking contradiction in every conceivable way. 

Enormously popular, but quite reclusive. He gave only a few interviews and didn't show up at his openings.

An abstract painter, inspired by poetry.

Ultramodern art, built on archeology, ruins, and classical antiquity.

American, but spent most of his life in Rome.

A longterm marriage to an Italian aristocrat, alongside a longterm relationship with a younger man, an open secret that was seldom discussed.

People pay millions for his paintings, but others called him a fraud and described his work as "scribbling."

Join us on Zoom to discuss his life and look at his artwork together. We will do some creative writing exercises inspired by his paintings.
​

The Poetry in White Roses

Tall vase of Hawaiian flowers: pink 
and crimson bougainvillea, 
a gathering of greens: banana frond,
 
braille leaf with tiny raised bumps, 
red heart anthuriums, perfect Valentines,
that hardly look real, but are.
 
The centerpiece consists of three white roses,
a quiet white, eye of the color storm.
Stepping nearer I see white petals with cream 
 
spiraling into the middle, and gold flecks.   
Roses are not Hawaiian; missionaries
and ship captains brought them to the islands,
 
the Old Garden roses, green roses 
from China, and the pink lokelani.
Of course, the Hawaiian queens loved them.
 
I move closer a few steps at a time, 
until eventually I see the roses are made 
from pages torn from a book,
 
ruffled with printed words circling
down into the center, music notes 
along the outside edge, and golden spots. 
 
Fragments of rose poems flow 
through me like fragrance, TS Eliot, Mary Oliver, 
Ted Kooser, and then stop at Rainer Maria Rilke
 
because of his strange relationship with roses. 
He lived alone in a castle in Switzerland, 
befriending Old World roses in the castle garden,
 
nurturing, and writing about them in letters 
and in verse. Wounded by thorns one day, 
the cut festered, he fell ill, 
 
and ten days later, he was dead.
This tenderest of poets left this world 
believing he died of roses.

Nancee Cline

Nancee Cline is a lifetime lover of the written word.  She has published poetry, a children’s book, and a history book on Hawaii.  She holds a master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Humanities. She has tutored and taught most of her life, both in California and Hawaii.  Today Cline lives with her husband on the Big Island. When not reading or writing, she dances hula, bakes peasant bread, and gardens her half acre of wild green.  Her new chapbook is Blurry Things.

Join The Ekphrastic Review at Women on Writing! for a zoom session on ekphrastic haiku, or ekphrastic-ku! We will look at the practice and craft of writing haiku, read some ekphrastic haiku, and do a load of fun exercises with visual art for writing our own haiku.

It's coming up on Tuesday, September 15, from 3 to 5 pm ET. The session will be recorded and available after for anyone registered.

https://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/classroom/LoretteLuzajic_EkphrasticHaiku.html

Kubota-sama Dreams in Silk

after reading Opulence: The Kimonos and Robes of Kubota Itchiku (Itchiku Kubota) 

His hand, steady, gentle
takes narrow bands of silk
places tiny stitches 
silk puckers
mini hills, mini canyons
dyes of love.
 
Vibrant colours emerge
purple     blue     pink     golden
four seasons
in kimonos to grace a wall
a graceful body.
 
Dreams of silk
flare when the wearer
turns in unAsian haste
betrays western clothes
beneath
garish     loud.
 
Kimono evokes
samurai
chivalry
gentility of sword
seppuku.
 
Poetry interwoven with pain 
shimmer together 
in narrow
bands of silk
simple
elegant
regal 
kimono
dreams of Kubota-sama.
 
Lenora Rain-Lee Good

Lenora Rain-Lee Good lives near the Columbia River in Kennewick, WA. Her latest chapbook, Saying Goodbye to Thomas, published by Finishing Line Press. She writes fiction, radio dramas, and poetry. Her words have appeared in online and print anthologies, including Quill and Parchment, Fixed and Free, and Notes of Light and Dark: Southwestern Aubades and Nocturnes. Her favourite poetical quote: “A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.” ~ Robert Heinlein

Congratulations to our five nominated writers for Best Small Fictions 2027.

This annual anthology series awards the best flash fiction and related small forms.

With a new publisher, Black Lawrence Press, in transition, the anthology is combining last year's nominations with new nominations from the first half of this year. This is why you see that the deadlines for last year's nominations were at the end of the year. 

​Please read these powerful short works and share them far and wide! 

Red Shoes Retrospective, by Camille LeFevre
https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/red-shoes-retrospective-by-camille-lefevre
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Monsters of Somnolence, by Katharine Lennon
https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/monsters-of-somnolence-by-katharine-lennon
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Mr Melon Has a Dream, by Caroline Mohan
https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/mr-melon-has-a-dream-by-caroline-mohan
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A Great Darkness, by Laura Ann Reed
https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/a-great-darkness-by-laura-ann-reed
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True Colours, by Tracy Royce
https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/true-colours-by-tracy-royce