The Hospital of the Innocents, Florence Dusk, before alleys’ glint in silvered libertines, the cylindrical window is spun by a magdalene; a pillowed manger fixed upon a wheel stone, compact to hold il bambini alone, for the unwanted or unfed, the poor or the wealthy, the Ospedale degli Innocenti. Reeling inside a newborn or toddler swaddled in rags, or a blanket grim from the street, or swagged out on occasion, in fine linen wrappings as on the perfect putti hatching on the porch’s della Robbia robin’s eggs, with their balletic arms and mummied legs. Odors of shit -horse and human - from the road’s gutter ditch countered by the hospital’s censers and cleanliness. To meet their new caretakers, starched, hooded, quiet, brothers and sisters in Christ, purse lipped, pious, marking the date and time arrived, the child’s size, the little coverings, the sex, the colour of the eyes; and, always wrapped within, a small token, sawn in two, snapped, snipped, or broken, carefully saved and recorded (the only evidence of maternity reported), crumbs to follow for mothers to reclaim innocents abandoned without a name. A gold florin crisply halved upon a chain. An amber bead threaded on a strip of grosgrain. The tiniest pink hand clutching a rose, ragged at the wrist. The crosspiece of a yellowed ivory crucifix. My god, and if I had to part with mine? What token would I leave behind? A dove-gloved shard of my broken heart, as most mothers would when torn apart? Miserable metaphor! when the situation demands something precious and palpable to lay in his hand. A cross never graced my neck, nor rosary warmed my pocket. I wear no silks or velvets nor wrap my throat in a cameo locket. No magic amulet to roll up in his tiny fist. Really, I have nothing, nothing, nothing to gift. But what pain sustained by this amputation! Soon he will be empty of my memory. So I will enclose half a poem, an aubade swathed in an elegy. Then when morning comes at last, my son will know Ada Lowenthal Ada Lowenthal has written poetry for many years while working as an architect and college professor. She has a B.A. in art history and an M.Arch so unsurprisingly, many of her poems are about art and architecture. She lives in northwest Connecticut with her partner and dog.
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Women artists from around the globe have been exploring subconscious, imaginative, fantastical, esoteric, and mythological worlds since the birth of surrealism in the 1920s. Sometimes they were overshadowed by the male voices of the movement. Often, they outshone them. Discover the lives and creative legacy of powerful, original visionaries like Leonor Fini, Gertrude Abercrombie, Rita Kernn-Larsen, Afarin Sajedi, and Marina Pallares. Learn how the creative work of these women can inspire and influence our stories and poems. Join us on Wednesday! Click on image above for more information and to register. Portrait of a Man As Mabuse does it, the hand held halfway turned between beseeching and confession, holds nothing but itself, while the other hand hides within his partly-shrugged off cloak. His hat's absurd, flopping above a black skullcap: a burnt- orange mushroom top replete with stitching, a seal, and snaps… Still, this is all bewitching distraction: the picture's heart, above the curls of beard, is that pair of offset, mismatched eyes. Ostensibly aimed at the viewer, they have, it's clear, no object in view but his own dolorous, half-wise, bent-nosed, knob-cheeked, small-eared, self-aware face. He looks our way unblinkingly and says, Look on yourselves, ye mighty, and despair. Eric Colburn Eric Colburn is a poet whose work has appeared recently in Appalachia, Blue Unicorn, The Orchards Poetry Journal, and other places. He lives with his family in the Boston area, where he rides his bicycle everywhere, but whenever he drives up to the mountains he stops at the Currier Museum on the way home. Away From the Flock I was taught to confront things you can’t avoid. Death’s one of those things. Damien Hirst Stillness in a white room, people looking like they’re remembering better days, a white framed tank, a display of life-death or absence of life, suspended gravity, suspended innocence, suspended time, vital yet breathless preserved midstride, away from the flock, playing forever in a serene meadow of formaldehyde on a bright spring day where nothing matters, if it ever mattered. What is it to reconcile the fear of death with the acceptance of love? Away from the flock, is it admiration or pity that drives the question Who is on display here? Kenneth Johnson Kenneth Johnson is a poet, visual artist, and educator living in Claremont, California. His work has appeared in The Diaspora/UC Berkeley, Talking River Review, San Antonio Review, and other publications. His poetry chapbook, Molten Muse, is forthcoming in 2024 Rose Bowl No more fly papers strung aloft - grave bottles blotched, stuck pretty card of cottage, thatched, with hollyhocks - though chains link bowl to ceiling rose, the first such fit, more fifty years, while petals pressed in attic box, As boy I watched crazed circling flies, where Flit had hung in poison cloud, a burst propelled above our heads, a nightly mist of foul smell, will-o’-the-wisp, light shining through the buzz career as droning died. The open fanlight drew them in from smog outside, though curtains lace, then daddy-longlegs, trailing thin, their draping legs collecting dust, I hoping trail would drag them down, cremation waiting at the base. Opaque glass painted with those blooms, they were a bunch, unlikely flowers, a purple pansy, face, scare eyes - oblivious to death within - slight smaller than crȇpe poppy, red, and asphodel, imagined there. It looked down, shining bright, pearl bulb, herbaceous swags in swathes about, with aster shades and Michaelmas, and daisies frittered, easy growth, anachronistic primrose pale, just like cott garden hung beside. From toddler through to boyhood, youth, then adolescence and its moods - beneath cornflowers, forget-me-nots, rhizomes, corms and bulbs in fruit - until the lad became a man, the rose was cut, the dead removed. Till now, unwrapped, hung bowl restored. Stephen Kingsnorth Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review. He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com Missing I find Ariel, I find her on the floor in the corner of my room, under an ashtray, under the weight of all these words. My mother calls: her voice is hollow and dizzy, with the latest. She is missing again, but so am I. I do not know where to run, where to turn, where to land. I do not know where to find her. I do not know where I am. ** Urdu Translation: **
Transliteration: Sylvia Plath (USA) ki tasweer Neem-Tasawurati Zaati-Shabeeh (1952) ki tarz per La Pata Mujhe Ariel mil jati hai, mujhe who milti hai fersh par apne kamre ke goshe mein, rakhdaan ke niche, un tamaam alfaaz ke bojeh tale. Meri ma phone call kerti hai: un ki aawaaz khokhli aur neim khawabbida hoti hai, tazah tarein khaber ke saath. Who phir se la pata ho gayi hai, lakin main bhi. Mujhe maloom nahein main kahan bhagoon, kahan muroon, kahan rukoon. Mujhe maloom nahein ussy kahan dhondoon, mujhe maloom nahein ke main kahan hoon. Lorette C. Luzajic translated into Urdu by Saad Ali and Nashua Yaqoob Butt This poem first appeared (in English) in The Neon Rosary: tiny prose poems (Cyberwit Books). Saad Ali (b. 1980 CE in Okara, Pakistan) has been brought up and educated in the United Kingdom and Pakistan. He is a bilingual poet-philosopher and literary translator. His new collection of poems is titled Owl Of Pines: Sunyata (AuthorHouse, 2021). He has translated Lorette C. Luzajic’s ekphrastic poetry and micro/flash fictions into Urdu: Lorette C. Luzajic: Selected Ekphrases: Translated into Urdu(2023). He is a regular contributor to The Ekphrastic Review. He has had poems published in The Mackinaw and Synchronized Chaos. His work has been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology. He has had ekphrases showcased at an Art Exhibition, Bleeding Borders, curated at the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie in Alberta, Canada. Some of his influences include: Vyasa, Homer, Attar, Rumi, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Kafka, Tagore, Lispector, et alia. He enjoys learning different languages, travelling by train, and exploring cities/towns on foot. To learn further about his work, please visit: www.saadalipoetry.com; www.facebook.com/owlofpines. Nashua Yaqoob Butt (b. 1984 C.E.) is from the Gujrat District, Pakistan. She is a teacher, social worker, and poetess. She holds an MA in Mass Communication from The Allama Iqbal Open University, Pakistan. She has authored two collections of poetry: Luminous Butterfly (2021), and Solitude: Silence and Self Identity (2023). Currently, she teaches Urdu and Social Studies (Secondary Level/Grade 9 & 10) at the Jinnah Public School & College, Gujrat, Pakistan. She has also been a part of a local Social Welfare Organisation (working for the empowerment of women in the region) as a Crochet Instructor. Her influences include: Rumi, Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway, Amrita Pritam, and Rabindranath Tagore – to name a few. In her spare time, she pursues gardening, sketching/painting, writing, and crocheting. You can learn more about her work via her Facebook Author Page: www.nashwayaqoobbutt. Feathers and Falling they end their flight one by one-- crows at dusk Buson Hunched against snow and cold, they ruffle ebony feathers against the end of day, flakes sift down, slide from their backs—a flurry of brightness in flight from growing dark. Huddled together, one shifts her feet on snowy branch, close by her mate. Looking over his shoulder, one croaks into the silent storm. Two Crows in Winter peer out from scant shelter at a glitter of falling stars at dusk. Wild Dissonance This poem is a Golden Shovel after Three Crows on a Pine Bough, by Yosa Buson (Japan) before 1784. The poet was inspired by the image inside a copy of Robert Hass' The Essential Haiku. The artwork above is by the same artist, but is not the same one that inspired this poem. Out of a gray winter sky full of wind, three black-feathered forms, then a thousand crows, wild and cawing from a day in the fields, descend on the bosque to roost. A dark rustle of feathers and a dissonance of voices. Someone nearby chops piñon pine logs for a fire, shakes pine cones from a severed bough. Yesterday a kite in the same place in yesterday’s sky Buson On the twisted branch of a wind-blown willow, a strange trio of birds hunch against weather. The kite settles its feathers. The crows perched solemnly in the mist, stare into the distance, suspend the natural urge to harass a foe. The same wind, the same spatter strikes each of them. Meager shelter in this place they have chosen—a Kite and Two Crows in the rain. There is just the moment. Yesterday’s flight—no consequence—memories of a high blue sky. Janet Ruth Janet Ruth is a New Mexico ornithologist and poet whose writing focuses on connections to the natural world. She has recent poems in Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Unlost, Wales Haiku Journal, and multiple anthologies. She has recently been writing haiku and golden shovels from the poems of haiku masters. Being a fan of corvids, she was particularly captured by the art and haiku of Yosa Buson that refers to crows. Her first book, Feathered Dreams: celebrating birds in poems, stories & images (Mercury HeartLink, 2018) was a Finalist for the 2018 NM/AZ Book Awards. https://redstartsandravens.com/janets-poetry/ Abstraction with Red Circle I could have been anything-- a cloud of ever-changing form, a loose sparrow feather trembling in the leaves-- that moment of weightlessness, that yearning. I could have been water in a glass, shattering reflection, instead of ice melt pooled on frozen clay. But the rising moon held me till daylight burned me. The sun raised blisters on my skin. You see? This world is not all sweetness. I could have closed my eyes and seen nothing. Siberia or the sand, what called me? The cold. What kept me? A red balloon. What tied me to the earth? The sky, relentless weight of it. Patricia Hale Patricia Hale is a poet and collage-maker. When words won’t come, she tears up things to create something new. She is the author of the poetry collections, Seeing Them with My Eyes Closed, and Composition and Flight. Her prize-winning work appears in many journals and several anthologies, including Forgotten Women, Railonama, Encore 2021 Prize Poems, and Waking Up to the Earth: Connecticut Poets in a Time of Global Climate Crisis. She lives in Connecticut, where she serves on the board of directors for the Riverwood Poetry Series. This poem is inspired by Her Room, by Andrew Wyeth (USA) 1963. https://collection.farnsworthmuseum.org/objects/1251/her-room The Artist Has Laid Down His Brush And is Done for Betsy Wyeth The same curtains blowing at the window, the same wallpaper, but peeling a bit now, faded and water-stained. The conch shell, empty as his chair, blows the same sea across the cove of your ear as you lift it to your head like before. Bring home the gulls to your roof with a long low whistle from the conch, bring neighbors with casseroles, bring the dog from his lapping the melt of ice in the dooryard. Bring your same fingers to draw the curtains aside. Step through each room, their creaking floors like old bones, careful and slow. Watch the leaves of his sketchbook ruffle in the breath of the open window as if he’s thumbing them, deciding which drawing or sketch wants paint today. The same scenes are never to be the same without his careful eye. The conch will go silent, the chair unmoved and dusty. Somehow a shaft of sudden sun slanting the floor won’t be the same kind of light he saw. Even the dog will not snore the same. People will call and ask of you now that the artist has laid down his brush and is done. You won’t answer because you are not the same as you were just yesterday. They will ask for some small memory of your time with him and you will say, the wallpaper holds all his secrets. Carol Willette Bachofner Carol Willette Bachofner is an award-winning poet, memoirist, photographer, and watercolourist. She served as Poet Laureate of Rockland from 2012 -2016. Carol is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Test Pattern, a Fantod of Prose Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2018). She is at work on a mixed genre memoir, A Life Beset With Words. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals, such as Prairie Schooner, The Connecticut Review, The Comstock Review, Cream City Review, as well as in the anthology, Dawnland Voices: an Anthology of Writings from Indigenous New England (University of Nebraska Press, 2013). Eve Stands in Front of The Weeping Woman The splitting hurts. She lifts her hands & holds her own face, can almost feel the silvery tears, the edges he's cut, the world of a woman sliced into triangles. Are we all gray inside? & how many sharpened angles unlived? Red hat with a blue bow. Packaged grief, she thinks as she moves closer. Picasso walls her in: a woman weeps, her silenced eyes haunting or haunted. Sarah Dickenson Snyder Sarah Dickenson Snyder carves in stone & rides her bike. Travel opens her eyes. She has four poetry collections, The Human Contract (2017), Notes from a Nomad (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2018), With a Polaroid Camera (2019), and Now These Three Remain (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2023). Poems have been nominated for Best of Net and Pushcart Prizes. Work is in Rattle, Verse Daily, and RHINO. sarahdickensonsnyder.com |
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