We Are Shaped to Hold

​A lump of clay rests on the wheel,
steady, silent, unformed.
The turns of the motor begin,
a low hum that sets the body’s pace.
Composed hands slick with cool water,
anchoring the clay to its center.
Push too hard, and it collapses.
Too soft, and it drifts off balance.
There is an exchange here:
the hand shaping,
the clay resisting,
both adjusting.
Slowly, walls rise where there was only a mass.
The vessel remembers each touch,
a record of pressure and release.
Held steady by confident, caring hands,
we are pressed gently, yet firmly, finding balance.
We find our shape in them.
 
Now the form has weight and shape,
yearning to be finished.
The wheel turns again, slower.
Metal meets the clay’s skin,
deliberately revealing the base,
giving the vessel a place to stand.
Thin curls fall to the floor,
spirals of what the pot no longer needs.
This is subtraction as creation:
we keep what is necessary,
release what is not,
and in letting go of the excess,
uncover our true self.
To reveal strength.
To let the form breathe.
 
Later, when the clay is dry,
it waits for its final skin.
The potter dips, brushes, pours-
liquid glass covering fragile walls.
The glaze looks dull, like dust,
a muted promise of colour.
But in the kiln, fire transforms it.
Heat moves through the minerals,
unlocking colour from stone and ash.
Iron drifts into rust-red,
cobalt awakens into deep blue,
ash unravels into flowing rivers of green.
The vessel becomes more
than the sleeping earth it once was:
It holds the memory of touch,
the mark of fire,
the long pause of cooling.
We too are a muted promise
until the fire finds us. 
Such is the heat
revealing the colours inside.
 
The pot is lifted from the kiln,
warm, solid, awake in the hands.
A piece of earth, reshaped.
A record of labour, of mistakes, of patience
meant to hold water,
or flowers,
or air.
We are shaped to hold:
holding burdens, 
holding joy,
holding lessons learned;
we are forever emerging.

Sidh Jaddu

Sidh Jaddu is a rising high school senior in Virginia whose primary focus is ceramics. Working on the pottery wheel and through hand-built alteration, he explores how clay responds to pressure and heat. He is drawn to both the science of how clay behaves and the meaning a form can carry, using his work to open dialogue rather than provide answers. His ceramic pieces have been recognized nationally, including exhibition at NCECA and honours from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. He occasionally writes poetry as an extension of his pottery, reflecting on similar ideas of transformation.

​
Mr. and Mrs. Wilson Consider Leaving Hallelujah Land

Heaven is gray with fluffy clouds above their heads, rising forever and ever. Only the razor-sharp needles of the trees may reach up from the ground to touch it. The horizon holds surveillance from the other side of the camp, peering over the sea. The Wilsons bow their heads over their work, satisfied. Lizziegirl waters the garden, hoping for beans. Jojo prepares his sinker and bait, happy with his long rod. 

Every morning at 9:30, steady as steady can be, Jojo says: “I can’t believe the hoopla them folks made about that whatchamacallit supposed to blow us all over.” That’s when Lizziegirl sets her watch, saying: “Yep. Tryin’ to sell us their old Arma-Geddin. More like a car parade, just with no hot dogs for sale.” Then he says, “Yyyyep . . . ” and sucks his tongue along his teeth. 

And so all the talking for the day is finished. 

In the evening, Birdie in the Cage chirps to Birdie in the Garden. Lizzie and Jojo record every trill carefully in their steno books. After dinner they strike a match, light their little lamp, and compare what they heard. They're no fools, they know it's important to keep up with the news. 

Then Jojo comes to find himself unsettled. In the afternoons, he's taken to asking, “Lizziegirl, you hear that sorta whirring noise?” But she’ll only say, “Jojo, you slept wrong, that’s all.” And she’ll keep watering the ground gone bare, collecting dead needles from the trees. “I tell you my Lizzie, this place don’t feel right no more. Better be gettin’ gone from here soon, I think.” For a long time before the very end, all Lizziegirl will say is, “Now hold on there, Jojo. Let’s see what Garden Birdie says, now that Cage Birdie’s up and gone.”

Kalliopy Paleos

Kalliopy Paleos studied contemporary American poetry at SUNY Brockport. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize as well as Best Microfiction for 2026 and completed her third full-length novel translation from Greek. Poetry and prose publications include 10 by 10 Flash Fiction, ERGON Magazine for Greek-American Arts and Letters, and Flash Boulevard. She is currently trying to improve her cooking, but it’s not going well. Her favourite place for time travel is the 18th century.

Self-Portrait in Blue
 
I watch with amazement how blue dusk
transforms what exists by day
into its own language.
 
At dusk, sunlight shadows
take on their own life,
cloak of tree branches
cast mysterious shapes.
 
Scrambling to see before darkness
overtakes, I try to name
the children in the distance:
angels, dancers?
 
A thousand guesses,
racing against time
against the gathering dark.
 
The pools of blue darkness become
deeper until they disappear.
 
I am most myself 
when I vanish.
​
​Lynne Kemen

​Lynne Kemen lives in Upstate New York. Her full-length book of poetry, Shoes for Lucy, was published by the SCE Press in 2023. Her chapbook, More Than a Handful was published in 2020. Her work is anthologized in Seeing Things (2020) and What We See on Our Journeys (2021), The Memory Palace: an ekphrastic anthology (2024), and Seeing Things, 2 (2024). Lynne is the President of the Board of Bright Hill Press. She is also an editor for the Blue Mountain Review and a lifetime member of The Southern Collective Experience; she is a board member of The Southern Collective Community Outreach and of The Franklin Free Library.

​Jacksonpollocking

She’s orange drive electron with a praying mantis rhythm
Karate’s firethrow in voracious hitchhike gasp
While bats spread wings with Stravinsky sonar.

It’s free jazz meets the dojo 
White polka dots hang lunar
With a dizzy flatness bang. 

Taste the pizzazz grumble of a late night tiger
Exploding kicks with trapeze manic sighs: 
Red is a verb. Chair is a verb. Everyth-ing’s a verb. 

Orli Cotel 

Orli Cotel is a writer and painter who lives in California with her family. Her writing has appeared in Lilith Magazine, Sierra Magazine, CNN.com, and more. Her watercolours have been exhibited in juried group shows with the California Watercolor Association and the Santa Clara Valley Watercolor Society.

Monsters of Somnolence

And so I sleep. The monsters come at night: serpents slip out from silk sheets, piling onto the floor and slithering up the posts of my bed; spiders burst from the webbed corners of my room, scuttling across the weathered wooden floor; owls observe from the oak trees looming outside my window, casting long shadows. In these darker places there is no light: laughter becomes brittle cries, love turns to lust for the lost calm and quiet of the night. 

And so I sleep. Yet my dreams are plagued with spiraling despair, and tortured memories of times long since passed. Things that can never be undone, nor forgotten. Shut eyes merely keep me blind to that which gathers and swells in swirls of darkness around me. My ignorance banishes nothing but my peace. I am suffocating in a prison of my own making. Trapped in a restless, unending trance of ephialtes.

And so I sleep. The snakes wind around my ankles, while spiders spin their spools of silk into my hair and over my mouth. The owls, the wisest of us beasts, have flown away: iron talons loosen on the dry branches, the wood crackling as wide wings unfurl and take flight under the gaze of a pale and crooked moon. A single spotted feather drifts down from the midnight sky to rest on the window’s ledge. The breeze rhythmically taps at the frosted glass, seeking entry. 

And so I sleep. I wince as fangs sink into flesh, and hundreds of tiny clawed feet scratch stinging skin. Suddenly, broken from my trance, I lurch upright into the crescent’s golden embrace. I scoop up the spiders in my hair, and watch them pool and spill over my palms. A flood of tiny obsidian specks scatter into the shadows, shimmering stars illuminating the dark. I wrangle the serpents in my fists and squeeze. Their slimy, slick bodies writhe in my grip, pink tongues thrashing at my knuckles, as they melt into bubbling chartreuse puddles. My now open eyes scan the silence. Fluttering wings whistle away the wind, and the yellow-eyed owl returns to its perch.

Katharine Lennon ​

Katharine Lennon ​ is a writer studying literature, philosophy, and classics. Her work draws on visual art, myth, and personal experience, with attention to symbolism, image, and atmosphere. She is especially drawn to ekphrasis as a space where image and language meet. Inspired equally by the visual and historical context of paintings and sculptures in museums, as well as the cycles of the natural world and social relationships, she writes with attention to what she sees, remembers, and feels.

Brent Terry and Lorette C. Luzajic are thrilled to announce our collaboration, Radio Free Nebraska.

This collection features poetry by Brent Terry and visual art by Lorette C. Luzajic. 

​Click on image above to view on Amazon.

**

Brent Terry and I met through a poetry anthology project with my artwork on its cover. He became addicted to my trademark square mixed media paintings and started collecting them. I became addicted to his poems, which were veritable feasts of the imagination. His poetry revealed that he understood the delight my art took in unexpected juxtapositions and the way that a mere morsel or tidbit of colour or texture could trigger a memory, or the meaning of life. We were on different sides of several borders, but it was clear we were long lost kin in some universe. When Brent confessed he had written a number of ekphrastic poems inspired by my work, I knew something epic was hatching. He suggested we collaborate on a collection of ekphrases and reverse ekphrases together.
Perhaps Brent and I had always been looking for an arts partner who shared our sensibility- a heady cocktail of irreverent fatalism mixed with incurable optimism. We let the project evolve naturally over a couple of years busy with the pandemic’s last legs, work, and incurable diseases, savouring the chance to dish over art and poetry on Zoom about the delicious and perplexing incongruities of existence. The “fine fine music” was the underlying rhythm in our electric, eclectic curiosities, and the fusion of nostalgia and anxiety was its backbone. 
Hi, Brent Here! Ditto to everything Lorette says above. As the subtitle to the collection says, this is a jam session. Lorette and I settled into a three-year groove of call and response, sometimes with me responding to a square in poetry, sometimes with Lorette responding to my poems with squares, but whichever came first, it was clear we had tuned-in to the same frequency. What resulted was a trip up and down the dial, a sort of four-dimensional, total-immersion radio experience. Our goal is for the readers to immerse themselves right along with us, come away changed. A full-body art baptism!
We present to you Radio Free Nebraska, a collection of poems after art by Lorette and art after poems by Brent. All of the mixed media collage paintings are album-cover-sized in their originals, known to Lorette’s collectors as “the Squares.” 
We have shown pieces of our collaboration at Gallery on the Green in Hartford, Connecticut, at several art exhibitions!

​Purity

The photographer came,

knelt, 
clicked.

Soon night fell.
​

​Reading Philosophy

Every day I seem to weave a patterned piece 
from threads of mental effort, often beautiful.

Every day I see the piece from yesterday 
has in the night unwoven, a little miracle.

Layer, Fold, Sense, Welcome

          I spend my glowing time Eternal, or I die.

Layer from near to far,
layer from below to above,
layer one shining moment, 

fold it in,

into the density of today, 
the complexity,
and of tomorrow, 
of life living and life lived.

Sense the spreading essence
of the gray and vital river, 
the  gray, insistent rocks,
the high green leaves, 
the sturdy thin grasses,
the reflections, the intricacies,
the silence, the strange available joy.

Welcome the presence,
the generosity of the Eternal.

Shirley Glubka
​
Note: “I spend my glowing time Eternal, or I die” is derived through erasure from "Night the Seventh" of William Blake’s The Four Zoas.

Shirley Glubka is a retired psychotherapist, a poet, essayist, novelist, long-term TER enthusiast, and the author of thirteen books. Her latest collection is Feet upon the Verge: poems et cetera. She lives in Bucksport, Maine with her wife, Virginia Holmes.

Danny Lewis is a retired entomologist and amateur photographer. He lives in Greenbelt, Maryland.

This single session zoom with Women on Writing! will provide an overview of the variety of flash fiction genres and forms. 

Friday, April 10 at 3 pm eastern time. 

Click image above or link below for more info or to register.

​https://wow-womenonwriting.com/classroom/LoretteLuzajic_FlashFiction.html

Starting next Monday, April 13, we start a very special four week course on photography and ekphrasis, with London Arts Based Research Centre.

Click image above or link below for more info or to register.

https://www.tickettailor.com/events/londonartsbasedresearchcentremethodsltd/2083232
​

Join us on Tuesday April 14 for our monthly generative writing session for ekphrastic addicts. This zoom session will feature a curated lineup of diverse artworks and we will write to four to six art prompts together.

Click image above or link below to register.

​https://www.ekphrastic.net/store/p187/Ekphrasis_Anonymous_April.html

Join us next Thursday for a Zoom on Leda and the Swan in art history. This ancient myth has inspired several millennia worth of paintings and sculptures, including some of the most beautiful works ever created, as well as art that is deeply disturbing. We will revisit the myth and discuss its various interpretations, and themes of desire, deception, violation, and destiny.

Click on image above or link below for registration and info.

​https://www.ekphrastic.net/store/p195/Leda_and_the_Swan%3A_art%2C_myth%2C_poetry.html

Join us for a unique asynchronous weekend workshop immersed in the music of legendary songwriter Lucinda Williams. We'll be looking at her songs, her relationship to poets and poetry, and visual art on themes in her songs.

We'll work independently. Lorette will offer feedback on your stories or poems. We'll wrap up the weekend with a Champagne Zoom party to celebrate.

https://www.ekphrastic.net/store/p196/World_Gone_Wrong%3A_poetry_and_flash_inspired_by_Lucinda_Williams.html
​

Creative Writing with Surrealist Art is a four week course with Women on Writing! 

​https://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/classroom/LoretteLuzajic_SurrealistWriting.html

A special two-part session immersed in the poetry, music, and art of Leonard Cohen.

​https://www.ekphrastic.net/store/p204/Dance_Me_to_the_End_of_Love%3A_the_art%2C_poetry%2C_and_music_of_Leonard_Cohen.html

In this zoom session we will look at the story of women in abstract art, and use their work to inspire our own poems or stories.

​https://www.ekphrastic.net/store/p203/Abstract_Women.html

Join us for a session on the Impressionists!

​https://www.ekphrastic.net/store/p202/Writing_with_The_Impressionists.html

Join us to discover the joy of ekphrastic haibun!

​https://www.ekphrastic.net/store/p205/Ekphrastic_Haibun.html