Ekphrastic Challenge 8
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Ekphrastic Challenge 8
The winning poem and a selection chosen by editor and judge, Emily Tee
Artwork by Chris Barras
This vivid artwork leaves lots of room for different interpretations and responses, so I was pleased to see a variety of styles used and directions taken in the poems submitted. This time, riffs on the colour blue and a variety of emotional states featured heavily in the responses, allowing for storytelling poems and a rich use of poetic imagery. Thanks to everyone who entered, and congratulations to this month's winner E.M. Davis, and special mention too for the following poems (in no particular order): “Inoculation”, “Salvage Operation”, and “Zaffre”.
-Emily Tee, editor and judge of our Ekphrastic Challenges.
Congratulations to E.M. Davis from the UK for her winning poem “retreat/advance”! A Wee Sparrow Poetry Press notebook is winging its way to her.
retreat/advance breath is black as a dishrag / hunched and broad backed the children play in and out of the womb / like ghosts / rolling a hoop up and down the cobbled avenues and rooms / of a mother in retreat / the advance has sounded / the bugles call to arms a smile draped like a mask / a box of rungless ladders / the evening yawns into gold / gilt pauses at the neck's hollow / the spine straightens / the breath lightens - Salvage Operation Within the pure blue waters of your mind Long extinct sea creatures wend their way Through seagrass as octopuses unwind Then bloom eight armed flowers that gently sway And bob in warm undercurrents that bring Your wayward thoughts to rest at close of day. Now you dispatch your divers down delving Into the ruins of my broken heart Where they explore send sediment spinning Rotten timbers crumble then fall apart From the wrecks of my memories now free Fragments float up as silvery shoals dart Among artefacts hidden within me Trinkets and treasure lie concealed under Rubbish and junk I don’t want you to see But your workers still gather their plunder Sweep the debris clear leaving me to find Myself light again glowing with wonder. Chas MacKinnon UK - masks and mirrors our hidden faces worlds within worlds Vanessa Hope UK - Retroflux Peer into the pura-pod: a poised porpoise Provides the pointer to progeny's paralysis. Depictions there of the last generation To manage generative intelligence Which now self-generates: Those ancestors, their totemic faces ink-brushed by Youngsters - formulaically, of course - the scene Observe with benevolently disguised malevolence; Into the lives of present mortals their Noses stick, watching their Artificial platform play out, while these inheritors, Stickmen, of material but lacking substance, Look to whichever door They are to be drawn. Once an innocuous tool for the time-stressed: Tech, Once cutting edge, cut corners, And so forever gains the edge... The result seen here - these pithless aqualungs, Their puny brains all washed, all dead. Alison Sesi Germany - Hiding in the waiting room There is a busy waiting room in my brain Filled with different emotions waiting for their name to be called There’s pushing and shoving and there’s certainly no sign of an orderly queue They stand shoulder to shoulder with my daydreaming creations It’s fuzzy and frenetic all at once I try and look for equilibrium but I can only find chaos I manage to keep this all a secret and I am veiled in lies My mouth tells a different story and my smile belies the truth Sometimes my true personality peeks through As my eyes squint and my lips purse But I quickly remember, I can’t give too much away So, I’ll keep my tears to myself, I don’t want to wet my cheeks If they are soaked then the lies will slide off and I might reveal my true self Norman Dearlove-Scott - The Smiling Spider A spider dances across the top of the piano. He is as dark as noted quilled on sheet music. If I pause, he will sense worlds of difference in the vibrations that carried him here today. And if I stop playing my little morning song, he will stop and turn all of his eyes upon me in a burst of curiosity, then in a burst of fear as he abandons his sunlit dance for darkness. Deep in my soul I know that music connects us all to places, to experiences, to memories, and I feel it is exactly the same for this spirit who dances entirely to the rhythms of Satie. I think he will remember this tune for weeks. I believe he will return here, even in the rain, even when the piano is resonant with silence. David Thorndale Fukuoka, Japan - Grey Man This grey man walks my nightmares a mantis his faceless face smiles nonetheless no number of steps can take me away from him. Pillars of concrete rough plaster my heart is running a hundred miles a second choking me, an apple core jammed inside my throat. Marc Brimble Spain - … stray thoughts in mind … (a tanka) On the face of it My mind is filled with stray thoughts A smile hides the track Of a conveyor belt’s course Through open and closing doors Peter R Longden UK - Inoculation Roll up your sleeves, bare your arms Get your daily inoculation of news flashes The wailing child The bombed out buildings Two minutes of this, two minutes of that Don't change channel Widen your eyes The donkey pulling the overladen cart Whipped to go faster as people flee What's on tonight? Ah yes, "Temptation Island" Where palm trees sway and dolphins leap So far away in an invented scenario. The vaccine of bastard war seeps into our bloodstream Lip service paid to ceasefires Lip service paid to peace talks Women squat at the side of the roads Their heads in their hands. Jane Hanson Italy - The Oracle In the shadow of midnight lives a little seed that takes root in my dreaming sprouting thorns that bleed all the hurts and mishaps all the guilt and need all the failed moments that I never breathed the love gone unanswered the throb of regret the incessant painful hammering of questions left unsaid of climbing stairs to fairy tales that turn out to be cruel burying the wickedness deep out of conscious view of falling down a rabbit hole housed in Delphic ruins to find that I’m the oracle of my encoffined truths… Anna Dean Australia - Picasso's smile... hidden behind shadows of time Katherine E Winnick Brighton, UK - Graffiti on the Walls Graffiti on the walls is a show of what is vital to the local folks: Tags and people, lads all pissing on posts to make their marks and boost their dislocated egos, overwriting...this barrier...//my territory// Out of the cave now, in the open, eyes on you, no more bison and antelopes roam. There's a fish in the clouds though—or is it a whale? There is maze and there is underpass, much running in the ghetto. There is hunter, there is artist and there is viewer and interpreter. Oh let us have no priests to tell us what we see! It is just a bit of grinning fun tomfoolery. There IS no scary alien spaceman down there on the right, with his backpack of breathable air floating —out of time... Clive Donovan UK - zaffre mocking blue smile, azure grimace, countless cerulean bites cobalt and cornflower spiraling into a bottomless abyss you leave behind a wave of nothingness I've turned Siberian, frigid with cold weighted down with ambivalence a renegade vessel of Arctic meanderings I rush to you but you push me away you allow me to offer comfort but only when you feel the need encouraged, I yearn for your embrace reciprocity, a game you refuse to play bludgeoned again and again, I accepted the gleeful blows believed we were engaged in some kind of playful theater had you not, with finality, closed the door I might well have remained, perpetually one-down exactly where you always wanted me to be like the polar night, I’ve learned, love isn't only tangled shades of melancholy sometimes it's a matter of black and blue Julie Allyn Johnson United States - Monday Mourning I wake up to a dark shade of blue though it´s gone midday. Cold blankets everything - all the versions of me run around in my mind. Melancholy grins mischievously. TW Warrpos Spain
Here´s Emily Tee´s wonderful poem -
Endurance
A leery eye,
a knowing look,
punch-drunk, lolling -
or rolling with those punches?
A look of down, but not yet out.
A special smile that says
"I can handle so much more
than you could possibly know.
How can I be so confident?
It's because I already have."Thank you so much to all the poets who submitted. We will be opening submissions for our 9th Ekphrastic Challenge soon...
A reminder that submissions for our monthly Wee Sparrow Haiku Nook are open until the 15th November. You can read the full guidelines on our website here.
Stay well and stay creative!
Claire
Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum!