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The Sound of Music Contest: the Finalists and Winner!

4/25/2023

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Judging this unique competition was unalloyed pleasure. It was like standing at the intersection of three different art-forms and watching a fantastic carnival parade by - and sometimes being swept along with it. Perhaps because of the inherent challenge of juggling poetry, music and fine art all at once (in a kind of double- or triple-ekphrasis), all the submitted works were imaginative, sophisticated and strange. Unlike many competitions, there were simply no "bad" entries (whatever that means): I enjoyed every piece, all the weird and wonderful, poignant and funny, tragic and comic, grotesque and beautiful approaches on offer. It was incredibly hard to choose a "winner" from this poetic carnivalesque, and I want to thank everyone who entered for a wonderful entertainment.

Jonathan Taylor 
http://jonathanptaylor.co.uk

**

Dear Readers and Writers,

A giant thank-you to Dr. Jonathan Taylor for his time and expertise judging this contest. Jonathan is a tough act to follow- his music-themed short stories and poetry are highly acclaimed. But we received so many amazing entries! Thank you to each and every one of you who took inspiration from the music themed artworks we showed you, and created something beautiful and important. Your poetry and stories were truly marvellous.

The winner and the selected works to be published were chosen from a document with no author names or bios. It was surprising that from such a vibrant collection of diverse works we had several lucky authors with double or even triple placements in the finals. A big congrats to our winner, our finalists, and every single person who participated.

Please spread the word about ekphrasis and The Ekphrastic Review, and help get more reader eyes on our writers, past, present and future. If you can share this or any post on your social media pages, we would be very grateful!

Lorette

Without further ado, our winner and finalists:


First Place
 
Fate, by R. Hamilton
 
Finalists, in Alphabetical Order by Author
 
Exceptional Lion, by Lizzie Ballagher
Reef, by Lizzie Ballagher
Leviathon Love Song, by Jude Luttrell Bradley
Silent Night, by Dorothy Burrows
Almeria, by Kate Copeland
Calling on All Dead, by Kate Copeland
The Harp, 1993, by Kate Copeland
Three Women Playing Music, by Katsushika Oi, by Jane Forward
Threnody for My Dead Violin Teacher, by Kimberly Hall
Gospel Song, by R. Hamilton
Some Klicks East of Budapesht, a Café, by R. Hamilton
A Little Night Music, by Sue Mackrell
The Gypsy Sleeps, by Mary McCarthy
Greek Mythology Meets Modern Pathology, by Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman
Taking Off, by Bayveen O'Connell
Flashback, by Shaun R. Pankoski 
Sarabande, by F.F. Teague
Communities of Loss, by Julene Waffle
The Banjo Lesson, by Kate Young
Jazz Singer, by Kate Young

Contest Winner!!! Fate, by R. Hamilton
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Fado, by Jose Malhoa (Portugal) 1910

Fate
  
That August afternoon, Zacarias plays for his maestra
guitarra — Madam Izar —a new song he has written
that he feels may be a little sad but hopes is not so sad
that the village girls who gather to gossip after church
(especially the pretty Élina) will no longer flirt with him,
leaving him no one to escort home or to make jokes with
before going alone to his own house where he lives in
reluctant solitude.  When he gets to the chorus, though,
he notices a senhora dozing, loose in her chair
like she is young again, dreaming (he imagines) of
her childhood in the Pyrenees before she was forced
to flee across the Cantabrian mountains by herself
after her family fell victim to Franco’s retaliation
against Basque nacionalistas.  When he notices her leg
twitch, it leads him to believe his theory correct, so he
plays on for her, just her, softly, hoping it is his lullaby
helping her sleep rather than just the wine and hot weather.
 
R. Hamilton
 
R Hamilton (they/them) is returning to poetry as a means of filling the vacuum left after a fifty-year career backstage in the performing arts, a retirement handily but unexpectedly coincident with the pandemic. Since then, Hamilton’s work has been/will be presented by Boats Against the Current, Caesura, Dollar Store, Ekphrastic Review, Intangible, and Nightingale & Sparrow, among others.

Congratulations to all of the writers below, our finalists, whose work was selected for publication. (In alphabetical order, by author.)
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Sleeping Gypsy, by Henri Rousseau (France) 1897

​Exceptional Lion
  
Do you dream, pilgrim, of the lovers left behind--
those you beguiled with your mandolin?
 
Is it wise to travel the thirsty desert
with a single water-pot—and quite alone?
 
Or have you drunk deep of mandragora
and drift now to another shore
 
where climes are kind, where you need 
no wooden stave to fend off beasts of prey?
 
            My gypsy friend, 
I think you do not know:
this lion’s immortal, exceptional.
 
He’s the one Androcles 
rescued centuries ago—from whose paw
drew out a savage blackthorn. 
 
Soft-muzzled, inquisitive, 
he’s the one who then refused to fall 
on Christians thrown to him 
 
in Circus Maximus, but hunkered 
down on haunches, licked 
his tender, wounded paw,
 
grinned gleefully / playfully
at the Christians—despite 
avid Romans’ blood-lust roar.
           
              Camping under a ripened moon, 
and under stars, you’ve no idea 
how blessed you are, traveller,
 
that it’s Androcles’ holy lion 
who found you, who watches 
over you until blue dawn.
 
Strange how your broken dreams, 
your lonely music, have drawn again 
the cruel thorn from this old lion.
 
Lizzie Ballagher

In 2022, Ballagher was chosen as winner in Poetry on the Lake's formal category with a pantoum entitled ‘Across the Barle’. Her work has appeared in print and online on both sides of the Atlantic; it has also been presented in podcasts on Poetry Worth Hearing (Anchor fm).  Several of her poems in the last two decades have, too, been set to music. Contributing regularly to Southeast Walker Magazine, she lives in the UK, writing a blog at https://lizzieballagherpoetry.wordpress.com/. 

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Blue and Green Music, by Georgia O'Keeffe (USA) 1921

Reef
  
narrowing chasm--
kelp caught in cornflower currents
sea-glass harmonics

Lizzie Ballagher
 
In 2022, Ballagher was chosen as winner in Poetry on the Lake's formal category with a pantoum entitled ‘Across the Barle’. Her work has appeared in print and online on both sides of the Atlantic; it has also been presented in podcasts on Poetry Worth Hearing (Anchor fm).  Several of her poems in the last two decades have, too, been set to music. Contributing regularly to Southeast Walker Magazine, she lives in the UK, writing a blog at https://lizzieballagherpoetry.wordpress.com/. 

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Fado, by Jose Malhoa (Portugal) 1910

​Leviathan Love Song 

My favourite love song is the one
you wrote about my sea blue eyes,
in the antediluvian days before Eden.
world of two topographies: One you. One me.

Awakening in those briny ancient depths
after epochs of deep-sea silence,
you yawned, opening wide your titanic mouth,
in a groggy, foggy gesture I took the wrong way.
From the distance of my solitary widow’s walk, 
I mistook your gaping watery maw 
for an invitation to take refuge in that fleshy grotto,
to lose myself in the depths of you.
Creature without fear, I dove headfirst
from my yearning perch, swiftly sinking
beneath your glistening white wake.
You rewarded my bravery with a serpent song.
Building slowly like a ballad
it gradually uncoiled to reveal
a thrashing hard rock hook:
YOUR EYES! YOUR EYES! YOUR EYES!
The deafening song stripped me bare
of fear and loathing, clothes and hair---
then spewed me from your bored belly to gritty shore.
Naked. Broken. Bewildered. Reborn.

Jude Luttrell Bradley
 
Jude is a Pushcart-nominated writer whose work has appeared on National Public Radio and in assorted literary journals and magazines including The Ekphrastic Review, Tupelo Press, Thimble, Moon Love, and Oberon. Her poem“Had” was selected for Atlanta Review 2022 International Poetry Competition Merit award. “Beasts of No Nation” earned Honorable Mention in the Oberon poetry magazine 2022 competition. Jude’s work re-envisions history, classical literature, and reflects on life in an ever-shrinking, ever-expanding pandemic world. Jude is the Reverend Al Green’s biggest fan. 
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Sleeping Gypsy, by Henri Rousseau (France) 1897

Silent Night
 
A thunder moon; the hot lash of her tongue
stalks his loneliness through this cold night
 
in this treeless land of sand and salt pans. 
Here, he must ache, haunted by surly beasts 
 
who prowl through his wine-drenched hours 
under stars that flicker fake light on his past. 
 
He stirs, shivers, stills. He mutters, sensing  
harsh grit clawing at his feet. His heels shift
 
sinking every grain of hope. While he dreams, 
his half-gripped staff strikes out at empty air. 
 
See how he mocks his lute with ghost-plucks  
as some random lion mauls his tangled heart.
 
Dorothy Burrows

Based in the United Kingdom, Dorothy Burrows enjoys writing poems, flash fiction and short plays. Her writing has been published in various journals and webzines including The  Ekphrastic Review, The Alchemy Spoon, Spelt, Dust Poetry Magazine and Wales Haiku Journal. In her youth, she attempted to play the piano. 

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El Jaleo, by John Singer Sargent (USA) 1882

Almería 
  
In the house of the guitar players, I learned to sing again. To dance 
to waves, indalos…my orange space I changed for white silks, 
it's an All Andalus State of Mind, this Jaleo place of mind, where 
bliss alternates between wooden boards and shameless arms. 
 
Is that good… should I halloo?
 
In the shade of the guitar players, I learned to free again. To curve 
my body to light, close doors to dark hallways…enter living rooms
where beats flirt me, commotional force, my dolphin legs, where
signboards alternate between war and mosaics, 
 
among tongues and tunes.
 
In the caves of Almería, I learned to write again. To read
the troubadours, the unspoilt dunes…a red-sand space I’ll 
never change, winter blue-green crashing, where I went 
to see the castle, songs started, and I took pictures of time. 
 
Who will remember this…remember me?
 
In the shade of Almería, I learned to fall again. To dance
to gitanos, royal poets…I shared my ice-cream and drank 
vermouth, danced and danced the Sunday long, longing, 
for my arms around your waist, bronzed. Time shouts ever 

down the caves. Jaleo stays a never broken chain.

Kate Copeland

​Kate Copeland started absorbing stories ever since a little lass. Her love for words led her to teaching & translating; her love for art & water to poetry…please find her pieces @ The Ekphrastic Review (incl. Podcast & translations), First Lit. Review-East, Wildfire Words, GrandLittleThings, The Metaworker, The Weekly/Five South, New Feathers a.o. Her recent Insta reads: https://www.instagram.com/kate.copeland.poems/  Over the years, she assisted in literary festivals and Breathe-Read-Write workshops. More workshops to follow! Kate was born @ a harbour city and adores housesitting @ the world. 

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The Day of the Dead (detail), by Diego Rivera (Mexico) 1924


Calling on all dead                                                Mira los muertos
 
Get out                                                          Salga
Best dress and                                             Ropa linda y
Sugar skull, orange                                      Calavera de azúcar, naranja
Chrysanthemums                                        Los Crisantemos 
 
Get out                                                          Salga
Frida’s blues and                                          De la Frida’s azul y
Wear your cloak, a golden                         Lleva tu rebozo, una
Guitar                                                            Guitarra dorada
 
Get there                                                       Llega
And braid your braids                                 Y trenza tus trenzas
Fill the market, salute                                  Llena la plaza, saluda
With cocoa                                                   Con chilate
 
Salud, dinero y amor                                  Salud, dinero y amor 
 
Get up                                                            Levantate
And serenade your nan                               Y canta a tu nona
Our dog Xólotl, recall                                   Nuestro Xólotl, recuerda
Their dreams                                                 Sus sueños

Get up                                                            Levantate
To dance                                                        A bailar
The Jarabe, high                                            La Jarabe, altos
Hats to honour                                              Sombreros para honrar
 
The two truly dead days                              Los dos veraz días muertos
 
Get through                                                    Pasa
The past                                                          Más allá
Doorway, like                                                 Por la puerta, igual
The last November                                        Por algún noviembre

Kate Copeland

​Kate Copeland started absorbing stories ever since a little lass. Her love for words led her to teaching & translating; her love for art & water to poetry…please find her pieces @ The Ekphrastic Review (incl. Podcast & translations), First Lit. Review-East, Wildfire Words, GrandLittleThings, The Metaworker, The Weekly/Five South, New Feathers a.o. Her recent Insta reads: https://www.instagram.com/kate.copeland.poems/  Over the years, she assisted in literary festivals and Breathe-Read-Write workshops. More workshops to follow! Kate was born @ a harbour city and adores housesitting @ the world. ​
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The Harp, by Augusta Savage (USA) 1939

The Harp, 1993
 
                                Lift every voice and sing
                                Till earth and heaven ring  
                                - James Weldon Johnson
 
Clannad’s Celtics made me giggle, but you held me hand
and introduced me, to concert halls, all royal and all, 
a piano and a harp, while I laughed at first, looked for
my lipgloss, loved you at the end, at coda, and you held me 
to tell too, about the gigs I felt, devoured, in a lifetime, about 
Shaw’s Cali Soul, that holds my melancholy forever, for ages, 
the stages, they held canyons, where neighbours shared 
the cats and cabins, the guitars, high as listening skies, and 
maybe I should witter less, yet you kept such gruffed 
mountain views, the slowhands got me on my knees, made me 
fall, with you, him, players, with tastes and thirst, and so 
will I forever sing, string, along a breakfast song, past 
an emptiness on my bed, undress me, whisper or cry, till 
heart meets atlas, as I waited till we drove ‘round an island 
and dove into blue, you do something to me, and so, 
whether West streets or port towns, my distance started 
while you held my hand, with rooms on fire, but I never 
laughed like before, when Clannad staged the harp. 

Kate Copeland
​
Kate Copeland started absorbing stories ever since a little lass. Her love for words led her to teaching & translating; her love for art & water to poetry…please find her pieces @ The Ekphrastic Review (incl. Podcast & translations), First Lit. Review-East, Wildfire Words, GrandLittleThings, The Metaworker, The Weekly/Five South, New Feathers a.o. Her recent Insta reads: https://www.instagram.com/kate.copeland.poems/  Over the years, she assisted in literary festivals and Breathe-Read-Write workshops. More workshops to follow! Kate was born @ a harbour city and adores housesitting @ the world. 


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Three Women Playing Music, by Katsushika Oi
 
Silk kimono and uchikake rustle and billow as the women settle onto the floor. It is winter, the padded layers make cozy nests for the musicians.

Perfectly coiffed hair, painstakingly combed and waxed into shape, adorned with bamboo ornaments and silk flowers, do not cover shell pink ears.  Heads tilt and bend, so as best to hear the gentle strains of koto zither, sanshin lute, and upright kokyu whose bow draws slowly downward, coaxing out a bird-like voice.   The delicate strains of the instruments can be heard only by them, the artistry of their music drowned to onlookers by the crescendo-decrescendo of father’s great wave off Kanagawa.
 
Jane Forward

Jane Forward loves diving down the rabbit holes of research she enjoys when preparing to write an ekphrastic piece.  Jane was delighted to learn the tantalizing tidbit that Katsushika Oi’s father painted Thirty-six Views of Mt Fuji, including The Great Wave off Kanagawa, a painting tucked away in her folder for yet-to-be-written ekphrastic flash fiction.  Her attempts at this art form can be found on her website: jkforward.com 


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Elegy, Blind Musician – Mikhail Nesterov (Russia/Soviet Union) 1928

Threnody for My Dead Violin Teacher
  
Recommended listening: Adagio for Strings (1936) by Samuel Barber; Élégie for Solo Violin/Viola (1944) by Igor Stravinsky; Threnody to Toki, for String Orchestra and Piano (1980) by Takashi Yoshimatsu
 
You died just after the turn of the year.
That’s not the hard part of this.
 
The hard part is finding the right colours.
The right tones, textures. There is so much
 
to express, and I don’t want my memories
to all blend into this sickly haze
 
of green – slippery, like my contact point
when I don’t use enough rosin,
 
like the smell of grass beneath my feet
as I wonder how much time is left
 
before the evening storm. I roll my shoulders
and my wrists, and I remember how you would
 
scold me for my rounded posture. My pigeon
toes. I remember how you would sigh
 
that particular sigh, and my heart would
drop into my stomach.
 
I soften my tone. Widen my vibrato.
I pay attention to the weight in my fingers,
 
let the music swell
and release, like a good cry. Like the sky
 
after rain. I remember the hymns you would
hum beneath your breath, and time the shift
 
of my left hand just so
my fingers glide along the overtones
 
and the natural harmonic sings. I remember
to breathe, so that the phrase lasts
 
as long as I can bear it. As the final note
rings in the quiet, I wait for the echo, but –
 
but you died just after the turn of the year.
There will be no answer. Only
 
the green root, diminished. Only memory.
Tension without resolution. An unstable cadence
 
in unsteady hands.
 
Kimberly Hall

Kimberly Hall (she/her) is a queer and neurodivergent poet and writer. She received her master's degree in behavioral science from the University of Houston-Clear Lake. Her poetry and prose can be found in online publications such as First Flight, Sappho's Torque, and Equinox, as well as in several ekphrastic poetry anthologies and an upcoming anthology from Mutabilis Press. She still gets the idiomatic butterflies whenever anyone mentions these things where she can hear them.


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Orpheus in Hades, by Pierre Marcel-Beronneau (France) 1897

Gospel Song
 
In a preferred and alternate universe,
Moshe returned from the Sinai heights holding aloft
clunky stone tablets clarifying the Cycle of Fifths,
the differences between Aeolian/Mixolydian/etc. modes,
and how best to avoid an arbitrary use of the C clef.
 
Also included were a few forebodingly proscriptive
admonitions concerning, for example,
parallel octaves,
stupefying consonance,
and polka arrangements of Pink Floyd.
 
Sadly, in this — our — world, such wisdom was lost
to us forever by the regrettable accident
of its being unnoticed under some old rags
in the raided ark of Indiana Jones because its
curators were distracted by Offenbach on the radio.

​R. Hamilton
 
R Hamilton (they/them) is returning to poetry as a means of filling the vacuum left after a fifty-year career backstage in the performing arts, a retirement handily but unexpectedly coincident with the pandemic. Since then, Hamilton’s work has been/will be presented by Boats Against the Current, Caesura, Dollar Store, The Ekphrastic Review, Intangible, and Nightingale & Sparrow, among others.


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Musicians, by Vilmos Aba-Novak (Hungary) before 1941

Some Klicks East of Budapesht, a Cafe
 
Some klicks east of Budapesht, a cafe carved from old rubble can sometimes be noticed by passersby in the dusk when the light is brittle enough and sharp, its location a mutable thing depending primarily on the traveler’s grasp of sobriety, their willingness to toss a forint or two into the cup for the musicians, and how broken are their hearts.
 
Joska performs Brahms’ Hungarian Dance #5 on his melancholy guitar slowly in a pale key so well that the ghosts of war and plague alike are prompted to push aside their chairs for the czárdás, their feet gliding slightly above the floor and flawless, all but ignored by Réka and Csilla who use bits of sausages on forks as puppets to argue about the decline of the carnivalesque in cabaret over their goulash and beer.
 
Meanwhile, on his drum, Oszkár plays histories that we deny over and over again, thrumming the way this great Plain of Pannonia has been overrun repeatedly, unrelievedly by Mongol horde, Ottoman empire, Axis sympathizer, and Fascism, Fascism, and still more Fascism;
 
Whereas the songs of loss that as birdlings fly away into the evening from Zindel’s concertina will stay with his audience forever, like first love: haunting us over and over again all over and over again.
 
Luca’s red dress warms the scene like a small, local, vital sun orbited by three moons in perfect gravitational symmetry, balancing each other seamlessly as she sings so softly, so gently lyrics using unknown words.
 
They all side-eye the sounds of rockets combatting in the Ukraine sky over the near mountains, and play louder in the hope that by doing so they can send the missiles back from whence they launched; a noble goal to which they seem most dedicated.  Moved,
 
I reach into my bag for my wallet to offer them a monetary token of my appreciation, but when I look up, they are as gone as yesterday; leaving behind only a faint trace of melody swiftly fading into fable while the horizon flares with the false dawn of disharmony burning bright.  So
 
I make myself comfortable to await the next show.
 
R. Hamilton
 
R Hamilton (they/them) is returning to poetry as a means of filling the vacuum left after a fifty-year career backstage in the performing arts, a retirement handily but unexpectedly coincident with the pandemic. Since then, Hamilton’s work has been/will be presented by Boats Against the Current, Caesura, Dollar Store, Ekphrastic Review, Intangible, and Nightingale & Sparrow, among others.


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A Little Night Music, by Dorothea Tanning (USA) 1943

A Little Night Music
 
 
Once upon a time she was told don’t.
But she did, this girl and her doppelganger doll
with spectral hair, curious and curiouser 
about forbidden rooms in a corridor
carpeted in blood-red, where a sunflower 
lays its heavy head, tendrils writhing.

She swoons.
Petals hang
from her hand
as she is caught in a 
Shining vortex of energy  
that rips her lace to ribbons. 

Behind her a door opens  

 a piano plays 

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.

Adagio
 
Sue Mackrell

Sue Mackrell lives in Leicestershire, UK. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Loughborough University. Retirement from teaching and facilitating Creative Writing workshops gives her more time to write. Her poems have been published several times in The Ekphrastic Review and Agenda, also recently in Bloody Amazing (Dragon Yaffle) Diversifly (Fair Acre Press) Whirlagust III (Yaffle) and online in Words for the Wild.

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Sleeping Gypsy, by Henri Rousseau (France) 1897

The Gypsy Sleeps

In a desert landscape
under an almost starless sky
between the lion and the mandolin
 
Her black skin scarless
without the lines
of grief and worry
her hair dressed with red ochre
and combed straight
without knot or tangle
simple as the lines
of her long striped gown
 
She smiles in her sleep
while the lion wakes
his wild heat banked
against her stillness
his hunger quieted
even while her mandolin
rests silent at her side
 
the memory
of its magical vibration
holds them close
breath to breath
 
she smiles and he leans in
to listen to the music
of her dreams
 
Mary McCarthy

Mary McCarthy is a retired Registered Nurse who has always been a writer. Her work appears in many anthologies and journals, including The Ekphrastic World, edited by Lorette C. Luzajic, The Plague Papers, edited by Robbi Nester, and recent issues of Verse Virtual. 3rd Wednesday, Blue Heron Review. Earth’s Daughters, Gyroscope, and Caustic Frolic. She has been a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee.

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Orpheus in Hades, by Pierre Marcel-Beronneau (France) 1897

Greek Mythology Meets Modern Pathology
  
Orpheus, you didn’t keep your word and like Lot's wife, you messed with gods
and paid the price, Eurydice lost to you forever. Perfect beauty and divine music 
did not save you from the consequences of your actions.
 
And what of us who are like white bread to your brioche? We stand no chance against our own weaknesses. Every day we hear the stories of miscalculation, the down-right stupid and the dead and dying,
 
smaller articles on the bottom right-hand corner of page 24 reserved for those of us anonymously unimportant and the larger, in-your-face lamentations for the rich, the famous and the infamous
and the families of the rich, the famous and the infamous who 
 
do not contribute more to this mortal world. Our human priorities are skewed. We’ve forgotten
who makes the world go round. The checkout chick/guy and the night packer and the garbage collector and the cleaner and the waiter and the shop assistant 
 
and the miner down a dark, black hole and the maid who ‘yes sir/yes ma'am's’ all day long and
the plumber scraping out slime from pipes and the young au pair who has to listen to the rich
kid’s constant squealing, all for a room (cupboard), next-to-no pay
 
and the husband’s hand crawling up her dress and the receptionist condemned to smile at
everyone until her mouth’s in rictus and the gardener on arthritic knees pulling out weeds and the baker crawling out of bed at 1 am and the teacher now expected 
 
to be educator/mum/dad/counsellor/juvenile offender warden, and when I think way back to
when I was a kid, the dunnyman, carrying the overflowing outdoor toilet cans heaved up on his shoulder vomiting all the way back to his truck.
 
Orpheus, I think you got off lightly.
 
Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman
 
Linda lives in Lake Tabourie, NSW, by the sea. In this beautiful environment, she writes poetry and has recently dabbled in flash fiction. Linda is completing her Degree in Creative Writing at Curtin University and enjoys seeing her work published in various literary spaces. She is a recent Pushcart Nominee thanks to the Ekphrastic Review.


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The Allegory of Hearing, by Studio of Jan Breughel the Younger (Netherlands) c. mid 1600s

Taking Off
 
We are not swans. We do not mate for life or share the same plumage. We do not inhabit sleepy canal banks or glide on still lakes flanked by mountains that mimic the curves of our backs as we dip down to feed. Our necks do not intertwine to make Valentine hearts. We do not make eggs; we break them. We hiss. We flap and drive each other further away in the wake. We pluck at the feathers of our good times and let the wind take them. We spread our spans wide for one last embrace and all we feel are the brittle bones of who we were when we tried to fly. 
 
Bayveen O'Connell

Bayveen O'Connell is an Irish writer whose flash fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and for Best Microfiction. Her words have appeared or are forthcoming in Brilliant Flash Fiction, Janus Literary, Splonk, MacQueens Quinterly, The Ekphrastic Review, The Forge, Fractured Lit, and others. She's inspired by travel, folklore, history, myth, music, and art. 

Picture
The Day of the Dead (detail), by Diego Rivera (Mexico) 1924

Flashback
 
Nineteen seventy nine.
Disco was almost dead.
 
But not at The Stage Door.
Not yet. Donna would moan
 
on a Saturday night
while the smoke machine churned
 
and the mirrored ball turned
reflecting our faces,
 
sweating and glittery,
bright eyes wide and shining
 
from cocaine and poppers
and pure adrenaline.
 
When The Village People 
sang YMCA, we
 
sang right along with them,
dancing the alphabet.
 
Sylvester made us feel
mighty real. We were
 
bad girls and macho men,
beep beeping, toot tooting
 
our way to the eighties,
when everyone started 
 
to die.
 
Shaun R. Pankoski
 
Shaun R. Pankoski lives in Volcano on the Island of Hawai'i with her cat, Kiko and more coqui frogs than she cares to mention. Her two most treasured possessions are handwritten thank you notes from Lois-Ann Yamanaka and the late Barry Lopez. She has kicked cancer's ass (twice) and makes a mean corn chowder.


Picture
Renata Borgatti, Au Piano, by Romaine Brooks (USA) 1920

​Sarabande
  
She is playing Debussy as marked in his note,
with a solemn and slow élégance;
it resounds in her clothing, her fashionable coat,
through this sombre and chic courtship dance.
 
It should be like a portrait, Debussy had said –
an old portrait, a Louvre display;
she is subtle in colours, her lips barely red
and her skin tone a soft gold-and-grey.
 
And her lover keeps painting, perhaps with a smile,
maybe more, as the sarabande swells,
and the chords are progressing; she sits with such style,
as she saunters through all parallels.


F.F. Teague

F.F. Teague (Fliss) is a copyeditor/copywriter by day and a poet/composer come nightfall. She lives in Pittville, a suburb of Cheltenham (UK). Her poetry features regularly in the Spotlight of The HyperTexts; she has also been published by The Mighty, Snakeskin, The Ekphrastic Review, The Dirigible Balloon, Pulsebeat, Lighten Up Online, and a local Morris dancing group. Other interests include art, film, and photography.

Picture
Musician with Accordion and Blue Bar, by Otto Gustav Carlsund (Sweden, b. Russia) 1926

Communities of Loss


His Hohner hunches in his hands
like an old cat curled in his lap.
 
When the bus breaks loose on the corner
and commuters pour out 
like ants freed from a child’s glass farm, 
he rises as if ceremony
stands at his heels.
 
He lifts his leg to lean on the chair 
he uses between buses on hot days,
long days, and begins to pull and press and pump
his way through a few happy polkas.
 
Strangers pass without change in his case
or nods in his direction, but when he plays a tune 
his father taught him about the old country, 
 
that hums a longing note under peaky memories 
of his mother after typhoid and his sister whose love
died in the trenches,
 
It is then that people stop,
then that they listen, 
and then that the change clinks 
in the old man's accordion case
echoing all their communities of loss.
 
Julene Waffle
 
Julene Waffle graduated from Hartwick College and Binghamton University.  She is a rural public high school English teacher, an entrepreneur, a nature lover, wife, and mother of three boys, two dogs, three cats, and a bearded dragon. Her work has appeared in The Adroit Journal, NCTE’s English Journal, La Presa, The Non-Conformist, and Mslexia, among others. She was also published in the anthologies Civilization in Crisis, American Writers Review 2021, and Seeing Things (2020), and her chapbook So I Will Remember (2020).  Learn more at www.wafflepoetry.com, Twitter: @JuleneWaffle, and Instagram: julenewaffle. 
Picture
The Banjo Lesson, by Henry Ossawa Tanner (USA) 1893

The Banjo Lesson
 
A small boy nestled in shadows
straddles the old man’s lap.
Warmth spreads, his face flush
with trust and anticipation.
 
His fingers stretch across frets
feeling the press of steel on skin
the soft pad of young flesh
marked with pain and indentation.
 
He plucks at strings, hears the thrum
vibrating through his grandpa’s arm.
They listen to the new tune
its hum on the cusp of the future.
 
Kate Young

Kate Young lives in England and enjoys writing poetry, painting and playing the guitar and ukulele. Her poems have appeared in various webzines, magazines, and chapbooks. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlet A Spark in the Darkness has been published by Hedgehog Press and her next pamphlet Beyond the School Gate has been accepted for publication in 2023. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet.


Picture
The Jazz Singer, by Charles Demuth (USA) 1916

​Jazz Singer

With shifts as long as the rolling conveyor
she passes the time inventing riffs
scats to the beep of electric machines
taps to the rhythmic bar code scanner
hums Coltrane’s Blue Train in Eb minor.
 
Annie is decked in C major grey
a checkout-girl with no middle eight
to break the round-the-clock monotony
of a humdrum whine looping the scale
interspersed with the tap of acrylic nails.
 
Dull, he scoffed, the bloke on deli
a girl with no voice, his usual sneer
as she slipped the tabard into her locker
toe-tapping on sidewalks of New Orleans
to the Blue Nile neon inviting her over.
 
Ten minutes later she appears on stage
the smell of jazz smoking the air
in mellow tones of the saxophone
the bluesy coo of a clarinet
smooth buzz of brush on skin and snare.
 
She fills her lungs with ‘Summertime’
full of swing, only Ella on her mind, 
spread your wings…you’ll take to the sky
like a lilac butterfly, newly emerged
its velvet foil on the edge of vibrato

Kate Young

Kate Young lives in England and enjoys writing poetry, painting and playing the guitar and ukulele. Her poems have appeared in various webzines, magazines, and chapbooks. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlet A Spark in the Darkness has been published by Hedgehog Press and her next pamphlet Beyond the School Gate has been accepted for publication in 2023. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet.

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