Dear Frederick, From Your Friend James: Found Poem
(from the artist’s actual letter, in his own words) I can’t thank you enough for the name nocturne as a title for my moonlights. You have no idea what an irritation it proves to the critics, and the consequent pleasure to me. Besides, it really is so charming, and does so poetically say all I want to say, and no more. Lorette C. Luzajic Lorette C. Luzajic is an artist and writer. Visit her at www.mixedupmedia.ca.
0 Comments
Platt
All night long they heard in the houses beside the shore, Heard, or seemed to hear, through the multitudinous roar, Out of the hell of the rapids as 'twere a lost soul's cries,-- Heard and could not believe; and the morning mocked their eyes, Showing, where wildest and fiercest the waters leaped up and ran Raving round him and past, the visage of a man Clinging, or seeming to cling, to the trunk of a tree that, caught Fast in the rocks below, scarce out of the surges raught. Was it a life, could it be, to yon slender hope that clung? Shrill, above all the tumult the answering terror rung. --William Dean Howells, "Avery" Nothing else I could do. It’s my profession after all. Photographing Niagara Falls. Its views. Its visitors. And selling the resulting daguerreotypes. Quite successfully. Because I’m a damn good daguerreotypist. Ask anyone around here. And I’m on duty every day, 365 days a year. This day, July 16, 1853, I was waiting for tourists along the American Channel rapids when I saw three men struggling to maneuver their row boat to shore. They had been working on the big dredging scow anchored in the river. Their oars were broken. Or lost. I turned my lens toward them just as the boat capsized and I saw two bodies cartwheeling over the edge of the American Falls too fast for me to capture them in my camera. There was no sign of the third man — turned out to be a local fellow named Samuel Avery — until he leapt up like a fucking phoenix and sat astride a log cantilevered in a rocky shoal in the middle of the river. The rapids were way too loud for him to hear my hallo, so I waved at him with both arms, but he was likely too afraid to let go of the log to answer. He was riding the river like a scared girl on a runaway stallion, but luckily he kept still enough for me to create an historic photograph. Took an even longer time till someone thought to hitch a lifeboat to the Bath Island Bridge and send the boat down toward the man. Avery caught and climbed into the boat, but before I could refocus, the rapids turned the lifeboat upside down, and Avery, thrown back into the river, met his fate just as his friends had hours before. Nothing else I could do. I returned to my hotel where I processed the plate and encased a dozen of the images for sale at my Point View stand. They sold well. They still do. James Penha A native New Yorker, James Penha has lived for the past quarter-century in Indonesia. He has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes in fiction and in poetry. Snakes and Angels, a collection of his adaptations of classic Indonesian folk tales, won the 2009 Cervena Barva Press fiction chapbook contest; No Bones to Carry, a volume of his poetry, earned the 2007 New Sins Press Editors' Choice Award. Penha edits TheNewVerseNews, an online journal of current-events poetry. @JamesPenha www.jamespenha.com Sources: "Getting around." Luminous-Lint. Web. 15 Oct. 2015. "Niagara River - Life & Death on the River: Accidents & Rescues." 20 Feb. 2012. Web. 15 Oct. 2015. <http://www.niagarafrontier.com/accident.html>. "Platt D. Babbitt (Getty Museum)." The J. Paul Getty in Los Angeles. Web. 15 Oct. 2015. <http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/artists/2800/platt-d-babbitt-american-1823-1879/>. Weld, Charles Richard. A Vacation Tour in the United States and Canada. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1855. Print. Sisters
Two 19th century girls seated between barrel and basket, the older’s small posed hands, ethereal as her complexion, near-lost in the sleeves of the boating dress’s blue-flannel. The younger one balanced a blue-brimmed hat, a small garden of flowers for trim. Aslant-- the girls’ eyes turn in opposite directions. Beyond the terrace, the flow of the Seine. The ruminative face of the girl in blue or the dovelike blue eyes of the one in white dress. I’m hooked. Is it the saturated colour of bittersweet red, the skeins of yarn in the basket? The detail of the sash trailing in the sweep between elbow and waist? Bodies that did not seem to touch. Posed like my childhood black-and-whites. My sister and I. In spring dresses, ankle socks, patent leather Mary Janes. We were artists’ models, arms locked at our sides. Sisters. Doing what we were told. These days our eyes, lives, angle in opposite directions. Our words nettle. Gail Goepfert Gail Goepfert is a poet, amateur photographer, and teacher. Currently, she is an associate editor of RHINO Poetry and teaches online English courses for Rasmussen College. Her first chapbook, A Mind on Pain, was released by Finishing Line Press in early in 2015. Recent publications include Blue Lyra, Crab Orchard and Jet Fuel Reviews, Florida English, Examined Life Journal, and Room Magazine. Her photographs appear online at the Chicago Botanic Garden, Olentangy Review, 3Elements Review and on the cover of February 2015 Rattle. She lives, writes, and snaps photos in the Chicagoland area. More about her photography and poetry at gailgoepfert.com. words are just things. like all other things in my work. bits and pieces and marks and implications and juxtapositions and shades and lines and thoughts. they are found and refound and rewound. they come in from all angles. through the airwaves from easy listening lyrics like so many splendoured things. from random papers and pages and letters lying on my table and floor and hiding in the middle of fifty-three year old books. misplaced titles and labels, fragmented formulas, forgotten sentiments, nonsense narratives, rearranged adjectives, verbs, and plural nouns. lists and more lists. recontexturalized things. things that were originally never meant to be together. collage. meaningless. meaning-full. fred free www.fredfree.com Simon Says: This is Not a Game
All I heard was shouting And whips against bare skin Their orders: March! No one cried, Tears becoming icicles In the dead of winter Walking on decayed soil Mother’s ashes Somewhere Beneath my feet. Daddy called it a game Just follow orders Like Simon Says But Simon never stroked my back With the blood Of my sister. The wind choked My fragile spirit Pressing with tepid bitterness Against the back of my throat A tease of warmth Blood-warmth. Spiritless We marched Away from destruction So little still standing. Our journey: Abandoning memories Arriving. If they did not kill us first. Mirissa D. Price The doctor said she would live in a nursing home, confined to a wheelchair, crippled by pain; that was thirteen years ago. Instead, Mirissa D. Price is a 2019 DMD candidate at Harvard School of Dental Medicine, spreading pain-free smiles, writing through her nights, and, once again, walking through her days. Follow Mirissa's writing at http://mirissaprice.wordpress.com. Color Keyboard Eye Hammer Matthew Hittinger
Matthew Hittinger is the author of The Erotic Postulate (2014) and Skin Shift (2012) both from Sibling Rivalry Press, and the chapbook Pear Slip (2007), winner of the Spire Press Chapbook Award. He received his MFA from the University of Michigan where he won a Hopwood Award. His work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, has been adapted into art songs, and in 2012 Poets & Writers Magazine named him a Debut Poet on their 8th annual list. Matthew lives and works in New York City. |
The Ekphrastic Review
COOKIES/PRIVACY
This site uses cookies to deliver your best navigation experience this time and next. Continuing here means you consent to cookies. Thank you. Join us on Facebook:
Tickled Pink Contest
April 2024
|