Poem

Crucifixion. Ekphrastic Poem. Neil Ellman

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crucifixion
 
 

(after the triptych by Francis Bacon, 1965)
 
 
I
 
 
After it is eaten
all is the same in the belly
of the crucifix
once a man
chewed, digested and spit out
misshapen remains
without a name or memory
without ascent.
 
 
II
 
 
Make a mockery
of sinew, muscle and flesh
sliced open and re-arranged
an offal pile
where there was a soul
now none
where there was compassion
now retribution
on a butcher’s hook.
 
 
III
 
 
Unrecognizable
even to myself
a victim of the my own conceit
I demanded providence
and was reduced to this
a torture of the flesh–
Oh, Lords of the Rack and Chain,
why have you forsaken me.


 
 
 
 
Neil Ellman jpg
 
 

Biography: Nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, Neil Ellman writes from New Jersey. More than 1000 of his poems, many of which are ekphrastic and written in response to works of modern and contemporary art, appear in print and online journals, anthologies and chapbooks throughout the world. His first full-length collection is Parallels: Selected Ekphrastic Poetry, 2009-2012 (Omphaloskeptic Press).

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Stuck in a Black Bird’s Groove. Poem. Video. Nordette Adams.

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nordette-n-adams-BAM
 

The video for “Stuck in a Black Bird’s Groove” is a remix. I made an older video for the poem and posted it to YouTube two years ago. Last week I decided I really didn’t care for the old version, so I made that video with its 200 views private, and produced a new one.

For those reading who like to document process, first I edited the poem a little based on how my aesthetics have changed since I wrote the poem in 2006, nothing major, and then I went in search of royalty-free music, pictures, and video clips. I became a member of Dreamstimes.com for still shots and VideoBlocks.com for video, but since then I’ve discovered Neo’s Clip Archive of free video footage.

Producing poetry videos once in a while fulfills me in some way. I do it knowing that my poetry videos don’t draw a slew of hits (with the exception of Misery which did better than average for original poetry). The video for “Blackbird’s Groove” comes on the heels of the Break Up Notes Recovery video which I produced last week. At the end of August I also produced a video of another poet’s work, “An Angel for New Orleans,” for the 9th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

You may read the text for “Stuck in a Black Bird’s Groove” at my personal website WritingJunkie.net/poems. & view me at writingjunkie.net/info

 
 
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Unusual Shiver in Winter Days. Poem by Sonnet Mondal

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She was a creeping winter,
coiling and settling into the wardrobe
of my lined collections-
  
of cassettes and clothes
(Scattered in a bachelor’s room)
  
Suits arranged by brands
fragranced by sensuous nights
brought by you molded me
into a gentleman
below uncombed hairs
and unwashed hands.
  
I was into lessons to be clean
while
I was feeding on my love.
  
From a scrappy life
beside a pond
abound with weeping cranes
she was the only fish
in front of my hungry beaks.
  
Short-lived and destructive
as most pleasures are
I am wedged back
into an untidy shiver
  
from an act worthy of no mercy.
 
 
sonnet mondal

 
Sonnet Mondal is an Indian poet of the twenty first century generation and has authored eight collections of poetry. He was featured as one of the Famous Five of Bengali youths by India Today magazine in 2010 and has edited & written forewords of several books of Indian poets. His works have appeared in several international literary publications including The Sheepshead Review (University of Wisconsin, Green Bay), The Penguin Review (Youngstown State University), Two Thirds North (Stockholm University), Fox Chase Review, The Stremez (Supported by The Ministry of Culture, Macedonia), California State Poetry Quarterly (California State Poetry Society), Nth Position, Dark Matter Journal(University of Houston-Downtown) and Friction Magazine (New Castle University & New Castle Centre of Literary Arts) to name a few.
 
He has been Writer of The Month at the Spark Magazine in June 2012, was featured as an achiever in The Herald of India in 2010 & featured in E-view points in Rockfordkingsley ltd. in 2012 and was a featured poet at Tea with George at Desperanto Publication Ltd. (now defunct).
 
His works have been translated in Macedonian, Italian, Albanian, Urdu, Arabic, Hindi, Telugu and Bengali.
 
He is the Editor in Chief of The Enchanting Verses Literary Review and Editorial Board member of Multilingual Magazine Levure littéraire based in Paris, France.
Details of his works can be found at www.sonnetmondal.comwww.facebook.com/sonnet.mondal
 
 
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It’s Not a Phantom from a Distant Past.Poem Robin Ouzman Hislop. Translation Amparo Arrospide.

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It’s not a phantom from a distant past
present in a time frame like a shadow
hiding something remote, intangible
in the myth of now, which habit sustains,
even as it fades. What is it then, this veil
that haunts beyond the place periphery?
You gaze yonder knowing there is no yore
enticing us from a space we can’t leave,
but only deepen where we’re conceived.
What enters then in this frame’s perception,
alluring because it’s beyond approach,
that cheats memory and never lets it go,
a holographic cosmic horizon
or death always reminding us we die?
 
 
No es de un lejano pasado fantasma
 
 
No es de un lejano pasado fantasma
la sombra en el presente actualizada
que oculta lo remoto e intangible
en el ficticio ahora, rutinario
 
hasta al desvanecerse. ¿Qué es el velo
que ondula fascinante tras el límite?
Más allá atisbas, sabiendo que no existe,
a lo inescapable confinados,
 
inútil es luchar por traspasarlo.
¿Qué se revela, pues, inalcanzable
y sin poder nombrarse nos atrae
 
con imposible recuerdo de nostalgia:
un horizonte cósmico holográfico
o muerte en la frontera y al acecho?
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop (Reino Unido)
Traducido por Amparo Arróspide y Robin Ouzman Hislop
 
 

This sonnet together with its translation appeared in The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes: Exciting new sonnet anthology edited by Richard Vallance now available on Barnes & Noble: Phoenix Rising from the Ashes BN ID: 2940148833628 Publisher: FriesenPress Publication date: 11/20/2013 Sold by: Barnes & Noble
 
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Robin Ouzman Hislop Editor of the 12 year running on line monthly poetry journal Poetry Life and Times. (See its Wikipedia entry at Poetry Life and Times). He has made many appearances over the last years in the quarterly journals Canadian Zen Haiku, including In the Spotlight Winter 2010 & Sonnetto Poesia. Previously published in international magazines, his recent publications include Voices without Borders Volume 1 (USA), Cold Mountain Review, Appalachian University N Carolina, Post Hoc installed at Bank Street Arts Centre, Sheffield (UK), Uroborus Journal, 2011-2012 (Sheffield, UK), The Poetic Bond II & 111, available at The Poetic Bond and Phoenix Rising from the Ashes a recently published Anthology of Sonnets: Phoenix Rising from the Ashes. He has recently completed a volume of poetry, The World at Large, for future publication. He is currently resident in Spain engaged in poetry translation projects.
 
 
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Amparo Arrospide (Argentina) is a Spanish writer and translator. She has published four poetry collections Mosaicos bajo la hiedra, Alucinación en dos actos y algunos poemas, Pañuelos de usar y tirar and Presencia en el Misterio as well as poems, short stories and articles on literary and film criticism in anthologies and both national and foreign magazines, such as Cuadernos del Matemático, Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Linden Lane Magazine, Espéculo, Piedra del Molino, Nayagua. She has received awards. Together with Robin Ouzman Hislop, she worked as co-editor of Poetry Life and Times, a webzine, and coordinated the Spanish sonnets section for the international anthology The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes (ed. Richard Vallance, 2014).
 
 
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Mona Lisa and the Marlboro Man. Poem by R.W. Haynes .

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Not knowing if wisdom would impulsively fly
Or if it dragged its feet when impulse flared,
She had to make the call and suddenly try
To do what an immortal would have dared,
An Aphrodite, ascending in a flying cart
Drawn by fifty gurgling pigeons at a speed
Which matched the speed of her own matchless heart
And the heartbreaking glory of her need.
Later, back in Laredo, she would say
She didn’t know why she’d taken off that way,
Smiling with satisfaction, recalling when
Her best moments flew by delightfully then.
 
 
He didn’t want anyone saying, “Oh.
This is how I feel,” but people do
Say that, and he said it, sometimes, too,
In unguarded moments, and he would show
How he felt, displaying great disdain
As he lit his pipe, blew blue smoke forth
Delivering himself from aesthetic pain
Incurred by foolish ideas from the North,
And, nodding slightly to appreciate
A tolerable turn of phrase which he
Thought suggested some brain activity,
He let his tobacco counter-obfuscate
Suspicious overflows of raw emotion
Eroding the bedrock beneath her devotion.
 
 

On the Savannah River 2013

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R. W. Haynes has taught literature at Texas A&M International University since 1992. His recent interests include the early British sonnet, and he is completing a second book on the Texas playwright and screenwriter Horton Foote (1916-2009). In his poetry, Haynes seeks to celebrate life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without sounding any more dissonant notes than he has to. In fiction, he works toward grasping that part of the past which made its mark on his generation. He enjoys teaching drama, especially the Greeks, Ibsen, and Shakespeare, and he devoutly hopes for a stunning literary Renaissance in South Texas.

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The Hand Me Down. Poem by Beatrice Evans.

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He wore the casual cardigan of his late father,
pouting at the shoulders, it reminded him,
that he had not yet reached the old man’s stature.
 
I could see how it comforted;
 
Smaller hands in oversize pockets
 
encountering nothing but tobaco fragments,
 
the odor of nicotine, amid the softness of wool.
 
 
A missing button.
A long-standing elbow patch in
unmatched battleship gray,
 
 
It had been around the world –
 
and through a war.
 
 
Never prone to shrinkage or fading,
it was still visibly – tough.
In it he wore a new peace of mind.
There, in the fire glow of his own fragility
he seemed to take on warrior status –
 
 
It had taken possession, and I could see
it would remain his too until the day he died,
 
or until some kind friend stole it away.
 
 
(C) Copyright Beatrice Evans.

Bea Evans
Beatrice was born in County Durham England, a coal miners daughter.
She now lives in sunny Queensland Australia with her husband, and four grown children where they have lived for over thirty years.
Happily retired. she feels that writing is the most relaxed she can be; something to pick up or put away as the mood takes her.
She has published her own book of poems sonnets, and love poems and is partial to war history and nature. Is in several anthologies and has poems published in on-line magazines. When doing nothing at all she is out there gardening.

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The Philosopher. Poem by Luis Fores. Translated by Robin Ouzman Hislop

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Burning surplus together with the dawns
praying for a percentage of heaven,
harvesting sunsets in the bitter cold
unknowing how passionately you loved.
 
Night knew of that pain by which you covered
inimical veils of mists that hovered
so envious of so much ardour
the way the passion was consumed by yours…
 
A trade that wouldn’t make love feel arrogant…
And pass in waiting a sinister entrapment
to kill the days by thought imprisonment.
 
And even though the heart be soothed by dreaming,
still it is made a fugitive maddening in…
A night now fleeing like a nightmare – galloping.
 
 

El filósofo
 
 
Quemando con auroras plusvalías,
rezando a porcentajes por el cielo,
ocasos cosechando entre los hielos,
a fuego amaste cuanto no sabías…
 
La noche supo que el dolor cubrías
con la enemiga niebla de los velos.
Y tanto ardor en ello que eran celos
en los que de pasión te consumías…
 
Oficio que al amor no hiciera altivo…
Y en el siniestro pasar pasó esperando
matar los días de un pensar cautivo.
 
Aunque calmare al corazón soñando,
en su locura lo hizo fugitivo…
Y así en su noche hoy huye: galuchando…
 
 
Luis Fores (España)
 
 
Translated from Luis Fores El filósofo
by Robin Ouzman Hislop

This sonnet together with its translation appeared in The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes: Exciting new sonnet anthology edited by Richard Vallance now available on Barnes & Noble: Phoenix Rising from the Ashes BN ID: 2940148833628 Publisher: FriesenPress Publication date: 11/20/2013 Sold by: Barnes & Noble
 

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Luis Fores (1960) is a poet, philosopher and arts anthropologist, as well as a devoted practitioner of plastic arts. He has completed practice and theory studies at the Escuela de Artes Imaginarias de Madrid (TAI), and in the Faculty of Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid. Following research in modern and contemporary arts, he achieved his Ph.D. in Philosophy of Art from the same University. In addition, he has achieved his Master in Arts Aesthetics and Theory, by the Autonomous University of Madrid and a Bachelor´s degree in Arts Anthropology by the Complutense University. He has worked in the fields of photography and design for both books and magazines. To his various creative activities, he adds poetry writing, arts theory and teaching as a philosophy professor. He has published essays (research) on arts and philosophy, as well as poetry collections and photography in Spanish and foreign publications.

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Robin Ouzman Hislop Editor of the 12 year running on line monthly poetry journal Poetry Life and Times. (See its Wikipedia entry at Poetry Life and Times). He has made many appearances over the last years in the quarterly journals Canadian Zen Haiku, including In the Spotlight Winter 2010 & Sonnetto Poesia. Previously published in international magazines, his recent publications include Voices without Borders Volume 1 (USA), Cold Mountain Review, Appalachian University N Carolina, Post Hoc installed at Bank Street Arts Centre, Sheffield (UK), Uroborus Journal, 2011-2012 (Sheffield, UK), The Poetic Bond II & 111, available at The Poetic Bond and Phoenix Rising from the Ashes a recently published Anthology of Sonnets: Phoenix Rising from the Ashes. He has recently completed a volume of poetry, The World at Large, for future publication. He is currently resident in Spain engaged in poetry translation projects.
 
 
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And then the Rain God Screamed for Love. Poem Video. Aberjhani.Audio. Nordette N Adams

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nordette-n-adams-BAM
 
Nordette N. Adams is a published poet and published fiction writer. She grew up in New Orleans, moved away at 20, and returned in 2007. In 2013, at the invitation of then Louisiana’s State Poet Laureate Julie Kane, she participated in the reading “Just Listen to Yourself” at the Louisiana State Library. She is also a contributing editor at BlogHer.com. You may read more about her at writingjunkie.net/info
 
 
Author_Poet_Aberjhani_2_dark_rainbow_profile_bio_art_by_PosteredPoetics
 
The American-born author Aberjhani is a widely-published historian, poet, essayist, fiction writer, journalist, and editor. He is a member of PEN International’s PEN American Center and the Academy of American Poets as well as the founder of Creative Thinkers International. He launched the 100th Anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance Initiative in 2011 and during the same period introduced netizens to concept of guerrilla decontextualization via a series of essays and website of the same name.
 
He has authored a dozen books in diverse genres and edited (or sometimes co-edited) the same number. His published works include the Choice Academic Title Award-winning Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, the social media-inspired Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry, the modern classic ELEMENTAL The Power of Illuminated Love (a collection of ekphrastic verse featuring art by Luther E. Vann), and the frequently-quoted poetry collection, The River of Winged Dreams.
 
Among his works as an editor are the Savannah Literary Journal (1994-2001), plus the Civil War Savannah Book Series titles: “Savannah: Immortal City” (2011), and “Savannah: Brokers, Bankers, and Bay Lane-Inside the Slave Trade” (2012). In 2014, Aberjhani was among a limited number of authors invited to publish blogs on LinkedIn. You can learn more about the author at Creative Thinkers International, on Facebook, Twitter, or his personal author website at www.author-poet-aberjhani.info/

 
 
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