#ekphrastic

[disscog]

Every Flake - a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Art: ‘Ikegami Honmonji Temple’ by Kawase Hasui (1931) found on tumblr “Who made the snow waits where love is” Kenneth Patchen Every FlakeEvery flakenever to be repeated ,blossom like no othercrisp whitenessadorns the cherry trees,fleetingdriftingsilent,such lightness of beingdissolves to returncomplete surrenderutterly detached,the eternal paradoxevery flakeoblivious to the great strugglein the…

View On WordPress

[atompowers]

Why so much life? I don’t know what to do with less I have given up all I have.

—Ilya Kaminsky, A Walking Man

From a new poem in partnership with the National Gallery of Art: A Walking Man by Ilya Kaminsky

“Giacometti is not working for his contemporaries, nor for the future generations: he is creating statues to delight the dead.” –Jean Genet

[chriskhou]

My Eyes

Based on Maggie Taylor’s Admirer’s Gift

My eyes began to blur first that day at the circus I shudder to remember how much was spent On those tickets whose only memory given Is that of formless blue speaking in tongues I think it had a tail, Unless it was the light elongated By my failing lenses

If they were ever to fade completely I’m not sure I’d want to keep them. Eyes are windows and mirrors even when blurred I fear forgetting the warmth of color Or the motion coming from my screen Carrying pinks and reds and stories That I know I may forget

If push comes to shove Maybe I’ll bury them in a box Or sink them in the ocean Though I know I’ll keep them by my bedside Until the circus comes again

[rustbeltjessie]

From today’s (4/21) NaPoWriMo prompt. Text ID under cut.

He had that electric sugar-shock of dark hair, like the gravel-voiced man who sang my favorite sad songs, was haloed always by something like smoke rings and coffee-steam, blurred headlights of passing cars, the moon’s corona, a spray of tiny white moths appearing in a shock, then gone, he grew up outside Rockford, the first of my Illinois boys who shared the same first name, I met him halfway the first of June, laughing, here, I made you a mix tape, my favorite music, we met as friends, I was already taken, how indiscreet, my my that night he took pictures of me, smoke- wreathed over coffee by the window-glass, blurred beneath the bare-bulb glare in the Howard Johnson’s basement, it was the first time I’d ever felt like someone, a subject worthy of a photograph, I knew I’d fall like falling off a skateboard, rolling down the hill by the Oasis over Interstate 90, inevitable as skinned knees, grass stains, a busted lip, a cough, a choke

In the parking lot we found a child’s lost craft project, construction-paper stars strung on blue yarn, sun-faded but still intact, a bouquet of stars, years on, I worked for a season in a flower shop, a job the second boy with the same first name helped me find, it was Christmas time, I arranged bouquets, Precious Time Rose-red, Dendrobium Orchid white with yellow-starred center, green of spruce boughs, after work I’d head north to the Art Institute, stand again in front of Chagall’s America Windows, the warm blue light, all the people dancing, making music, violins, the moon, the swirl, menorahed candles, purple bird, yellow-green spray of flowers, floating above the blue buildings, I’d remember him, how if I could make our own windows, our America, they’d have the broken bottle-glass, drought-dry grass, blur of headlights, sun-warmed suburban aqueducts, skateboards, skinned knees, swirl of smoke

Coffee-steam, glacier-carved lakes blue-dark icy shock, mix tapes, tiny cities, the halfway places where we met, the moths, two people dancing on the flowered tiles of a filmic kitchen, a bouquet of construction-paper stars, the blue taste of the rain that stained his skin, ask why I was made the desperate way I am.

—Jessie Lynn McMains, “Untitled (America Windows)”

[ivors20]

NOW ... REiMAGINE, Ekphrastic Poetry At The Foundry Studio & Gallery

NOW … REiMAGINE, Ekphrastic Poetry At The Foundry Studio & Gallery

The Geelong Writers Inc produced this excellent Chapbook from the Ekphrastic workshop that I attended only Three weeks ago, and a big thank you goes to our President, Guenter Sahr, and our hard working Editor, Victoria Spicer … And below are my two poems that were published in the Chapbook Ivor Steven (c) June 2022

View On WordPress

[notstellartistic]

Amber hues of the sunlit windows

encase the hero’s bravery,

but destiny

transcends what he thinks he knows.

Burbling comes from overhead

where a giant spider sack lays.

Heavenly chanting convinces he’s on his deathbed,

so he stares and prays.

Slimy gurgling emits.

The egg sack spits

and down it fell

ripping open and emitting a pungent smell.

The walls and floor tear

and they both fall down the well.

The hero’s thread is as thin as hair

Falling fast down into hell.

The secondary floor embraces him tightly

His breath heavy and head feeling lightly

The voice of a princess calls out softly

and reminds the hero who he is to be.

What once won over prophecy

challenges the hero journey’s efficacy,

but a century of slumber

has reawakened fate’s prodigy.

Without memory and voice,

the hero had the choice

to be free and wild.

However with a call to his name,

a revelation of his purpose came.

[melbellnyc]

After the September Accident in ’08, My mother sold her sister’s Little porcelain bathtub In a garage sale for $35. She never bought a new one. I saw that same Little porcelain bathtub At Frida Kahlo’s blue house Six years later. It was a gritty replica of Her original painting. It was a Little porcelain bathtub That held cinnamon legs and Gray water. Upon her Darkened shins were her Life’s memories – A skyscraper aflame in a Brewing volcano, a cracked toe Bleeding into the murk, a Drowned dress of yellow and Red (unable to be Revived), a skeleton sitting On a mound of dirt, dead Bird laid to rest atop the Gentle arms of an oak Tree, web of lemongrass plant Roots snaking across heavy Thighs, pubic-haired women Making love on a rugged Mattress. My, what a woman – To find refuge in a Little porcelain bathtub, To bleed the beauty and woes Of life onto gray water, To linger on past Memories until the skin Became a shriveled Raisin under the sun. Frida’s Little porcelain bathtub Held cinnamon legs and Gray water. I wish my aunt Josie’s Little porcelain bathtub Held the same Back in 2008. But, all we found it Held was ribboned legs And rose-colored water.

Melanie Romero, writer behind “Magdalena,” the ekphrastic poem inspired by Frida Kahlo’s “What the Water Gave Me” (“Lo Que El Agua Me Dio”)

[writingasymphony]

Ekphrastic poem, 9.

based on Hieronymous Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights.

There are too many people on this earth, why do we ever have to give birth? To more pain and more strife, this world is already balancing on a knife. People's pleasure can't always outweigh their pain, for a moment's measure is it worth it, or is it in vain? For a lifetime of not getting what we desire, then passing that on forevermore, have we not been here before? Let's just stop, take in these delights, and stop anticipating more nights.