Ekphrastic Challenge 5
The winning poem and a selection chosen by editor and judge, Emily Tee
Painting by Žofia Katriňáková
Thanks to all who entered. Many responses took the theme of reflecting on human nature and relationships, and others have looked inwards at themselves. Ghosts appear often. I appreciated and enjoyed the wide range of approaches to topic and style, the mix of light and dark, the individuality of each poet's voice, all while giving me a strong connection to the artwork.
It was another tough decision to choose a winner this time and there were a small number of entries on my shortlist that I've read many times before making my final choice. It came down to fine margins, and inevitably, there is some subjectivity in my choice for the poem that spoke most to me and stuck in my memory.
I applaud everyone's responses to the artwork, and congratulations to the winner and all chosen for the newsletter.Emily Tee, editor and judge of our Ekphrastic Challenges.
Congratulations to Mary Christine Delea from the USA for her winning poem.
Backyard
Sometimes we are in the kitchen in my dreams
and we are people, whole. Mostly, we are both ghosts,
my dead mother and I, sitting at a table in a yard
we have never had. We melt into plastic chairs.
We fingerpaint as if we are both children, desperate
to share our visions. There is an empty chair
at the head of the table. In my dreams, I know
we are waiting for someone to join us—living or ghost,
a being with a brain untouched by dementia.
Or not. Even in dreams, I forget. Never my dead mother—
I will never forget her. But other things are starting
to slip away, as if my brain is haunted by ghosts who
are starting to find they have other places to be.
Watercolour by Colin Thom
Open Invitation
In the depths of our secret meadow,
I host an elegant tea party to greet
the mirrored versions of myself I don’t know.
Ghosts from my past I hid in the shadow
sprinkle sprigs of truth from their sacred seats
in the depths of our secret meadow,
where the grass is always greener. Though
they see through me, why do I still cheat
the mirrored versions of myself? I don’t know.
They say I must unload the trauma cargo
that haunts my nightmares; retreat
in the depths of our secret meadow
and seek shelter under the willow.
Spring brings renewed dreams and treats:
the mirrored versions of myself I don’t know
yet. I’m brimming with hope to outgrow
me; pursue tomorrow and seek to meet
in the depths of our secret meadow —
The mirrored versions of myself I don’t know...
Nitika Balaram
EgyptAt Yumthang Meadow
It called me often. Oh, the grass—
How feather-like! Those pendent leaves
And branches form a fetching mass
Of verdure all around. Fine weaves
Of treetops etch the bluish dome.
Today, I visited the spot
After a year, prepared some rice;
Set up the table. Then, a thought
Bedewed the ovals of my eyes:
Those seasons when we used to roam
This meadow—Ramsen, Neel, and me—
Have gone away, and in their wake,
Dissevered our fraternity
And left my heart alone to break.
I vowed to not come here thereafter
But something changed my heart today.
I felt their presence on the chairs,
Their smiles appeared upon the gay
And guggling brooklet, while a pair
Of Daffodils displayed their laughter.
Shamik Banerjee
IndiaOut of the other
In between the surface and alluvium
Of who should have broken the bread
Of empty seats and filling canopy
Of the shades of all that shades and covers
Lay the lucid layers
Of time and colour
Of something I lost in the forest
If I would only remember what it was
Something made of …. Of what?
Of ticking time and curdling colour
Oozing each out of the other
And if more colour then more time for finding
Edgar Ballantnye
Australia The Ghosts of Summer
Who are these ghosts of summer
That sit and watch
Feasting on fruits of time and love
While trees descend like clouds
Beyond their touch?
Who are these ghosts of summer?
What stories would they tell from shade
That stays unsettled
as the empty chair
Awaiting guests?
Who are these ghosts of summer?
They creep forward in the dark
Like the hands upon a clock
As seasons fade and fall away
Despite the brightness of the day.
MJ Adams
UKMy Father Says
the angels gather in the meadow at dusk
to feast on the body and blood of Christ
My father says if I want to eat with the angels
I must listen to everything he says and do as I’m told
My father says there is a special place in hell
for children like me that don’t obey their parents
My father says he will die young
and it will be my fault
I see the angels
They eat a hearty rye bread and drink red wine
made by my mother
As long as she lives
I won’t miss my father at all
Michele Rule
CanadaThe Parable of the Hungry Ghost Picnic
Every summer the Blue Buddha hosts a magnificent garden party
and invites all the hungry ghosts to a picnic under the trees,
in the place where the underworld butts up against his lawn.
Dressed in their best white linen sheets, all those who were stingy and mean spirited
to others in their former lives and came back as hungry ghosts
gather around the table, happy to be there, and quite anxious to eat.
There is plenty of food for all, but before the guests can touch it
the Blue Buddha instructs his guests they are only allowed to eat
what each of the other guests is willing to share.
And every year the bright sun rises and sets until all the hungry ghosts,
unwilling to share what they have, float back to the underworld with empty stomachs
and resentful hearts hoping that next year all those other ghosts will stop behaving so badly.
Mark Hendrickson
USAA herd-twined fallacy A fine backdrop for a feed today, emerald and turquoise mash beyond the plate. Cotton bud balls foam from gruff-grained mouths, perched evenly at table’s end. No nourishment on these flat discs, crimson pasts croon from the slaughter- house. Water just a wool’s-length out of reach—and salvation out of sight. You were never dinner party guests, bonded at close quarters. No, you were never equal to the rest, mere apparitions to the slaughter. D I Hughes UK
"we're all up for pizza in the park!"
the enthusiasm is palpable
but the smiles
and the sunshine
resemble store bought tomatoes
mozzarella 'style' cheese
nothing is real
I see past the focus
into the blur
we don't sit in the shade
avoid rot for one day
I waste it, my moment in the sun
feel transparent and opaque
complain about the food...
crumbs left on the table
welcome an emotionless ant
to show me how living is done
I squash it
Di11y Da11y
UKMorning Idyll
It isn’t mine to give, but
if I could, this would be
the type of day I’d offer
to you: a cloudless sky of
wayfarer blue slowly
expanding above the lush
sweep of pasture and where
green-turning-gold-turning-
back-to-green leaves would
be set out, like tiny parasols,
above our ritual of leisure
and where we, set upon chairs
ghosting the field, might
pause to consider the day’s
exquisite emptiness and the
softer fluency of morning
light flowing from limb to
limb while awaiting the day’s
brighter splendor and the
first few notes of birdsong.
John Muro
USAShadow Work
And the ghostlike creatures remained
despite the sunny disposition of the day,
like marble statues that refuse to move
forcing a hard look at my shadows,
do I like sitting with myself at the table,
all the pieces I’ve locked away, the cob-webbed corners
the parts that come to light beneath the sun?
The resting Buddha tells me to listen,
quiet the polite table banter
notice, how the rustling through the trees
is more than wind rising goosebumps on my skin
but something more to be confronted,
let the darkest parts sink in
only then can I see the other side,
the open light
and enjoy the feast I’ve earned by dining with my ghosts.
Ashley Reynolds
USA As I still try to picture A happy-sad ex-love story I still haven't forgotten your socks, your shirts everywhere, morning coffee cups, out the window. I still haven't forgotten the riverviews and garden and how we invited friends or walked a whole city. I still haven’t forgotten Sunday shrimp lunches and how we cheered at puns, taking pictures of leaves. We finally went for dinner in that restaurant with the green seats, a chocolate cake sweeter than me, wine menus richer than life. That's why I still try to picture a weekend and all morning Mondays. That’s why I still walk rivers and sit in gardens, looking out for you and your puns, a connection beyond trees. We turn our heads like wind and won’t sit down at tables never more. And other times, in my every whatever corner, I still try to picture how you have dinner with friends. Kate Copeland UK
Family Time is Sacred Time
“Dinner is on the table!”
Grandma shouts through the veil,
And glasses shatter once again,
Mother rushes for brush and pan,
Muttering how no one ever helps her,
How we’re all just lazing around,
Grandpa half-asleep, his chair
Still creaking to and fro
Where he sat down two summers ago
And never got up.
So I get up
And ask “How can I help?”
Expecting a grumble or a huff, instead
“Will your sister come?” comes out in a puff.
And through the fence I see the headlights in the fog
Barreling toward the sprawling log,
And she crashes through the windshield just in time
To pluck herself down beside me,
Because family time is sacred time.
And tardiness is the death of virtue.
R.I. Károly
GermanyNo Looking Back
As I lay ill in my bed
I heard voices whispering in my head.
‘Is she alive or is she dead?’
is what the whispering voices said.
‘Come to us, we’d love you to stay
in our beautiful land with its perfect days.
Just come through the tunnel but no looking back
or you’ll be trapped forever in limbo’s deep black –
quickly now, just pass on through
we’re all here waiting for you;
there’s nothing to fear, just a little bit closer
let us take your hand, now the whole of you.’
They pulled me into an ambrosial feast,
the guest at a table of amorphic mystics.
The more they beguiled me, the more I felt changed
metaphysically segueing to a mist without rain.
Then with one last breath – life’s goodbye kiss –
I passed from this life just lived
to the next on their list.
Anna Dean
AustraliaGhosts of Dead Parents
Her ashes spread on Skirrid that she loved;
and his bones buried by the Harbour bay…
Why choose views for the dead? Once in earth shoved,
dirt in the dark is all they’d see, not day,
even if they lived. And if cremated, well…
So is it for our own guilt’s absolution?
Or status, that their graves our standing tell?
Or rites for social change’s resolution?
Those who were always here are here no more -
Their alwaysness runs out when they decease,
and life will now sound different from before,
like insect shrills not heard until they cease.
Dead ghosts sleep twittering in our heads’ domed caves,
waking to fill night skies from dreams and graves.
Robin Helweg-Larsen
BahamasGhost Picnic
Of course, in the matter of psychic energy,
it is more a question of who is consuming whom.
At ghost country picnics it could be argued
[particularly by participants in the tale]
that the attendant spectres are real enough
but that this large incongruous table is the ghost.
After all, these rough uneaten platters on top
look just like museum mock-ups of a feast
in a reconstructed mediaeval kitchen.
And while the present company of shepherds and sheep
may recriminate among themselves
as to what exactly is supposed to be IN those pies,
a hungry bush above is impatient to discover
what next will feed its wolfish roots.
But we all defer to the raven
—wise harbinger and prescient bird of death.
Waiting on silence
squatting in his own shadow
he clears his throat
Clive Donovan
UKverdant green fields
a Buddha seated
at the table
Katherine E Winnick
UK Here´s Emily´s super poem -
The last meal next to the old orchard
did they see them first, or hear the truck engines
there, by the orchard, on that last late afternoon,
as the apples ripened, when they'd stopped their work
to rest, to eat their simple meal next to their home,
did they hear an unfamiliar squeal of heavy tyres,
voices shouting, barking orders at each other, at them -
or did they see the trucks' dust raised along the roadside
on the quiet lane used only by the rusty farm vehicles,
and did those plastic chairs get pushed back quickly
as children were grabbed and lifted by worried arms,
small bodies shielded from whatever was coming next,
plates and bowls and tumbled water glasses left behind
like those sun-bleached chairs, shroud white, bone white,
the signs of discarded family life left lying to bear witness
that once people lived here, before the trucks came
Watercolour by Colin Thom
Thank you to all the poets who have participated in our challenges so far. It has been fascintating to see the poetic responses to the varied artwork. Thank you too to the wonderful Emily Tee, our trusty judge and editor.
We´re taking a wee break from challenges until May.
Meanwhile, stay well and stay creative.
Claire
Congratulations to Mary and everyone in the showcase! Thank you for including me alongside such beautiful work. I also love Emily's haunting poem :)