Hindsight, By Betsy Mars

Hindsight By Betsy Mars Even Chagall looks over his shoulder, hearing voices of ancestors whispering of inadequacies and distortions: they murmur a crescent moon when the moon is full! This one holds the Torah tightly, solemn as God’s commands. Another plays the violin – in his ear, the music tastes purple. A couple compares his

Incantation, By Diane Jackman

Incantation By Diane Jackman Let down your hair, o watermother. Let your waves spread over the land filling the cracks and fissures with the blessing of water. Cradle your golden ball, o watermother. Let your waves shade the sun hiding its ceaseless fire with the blessing of cloud. Open your body, o watermother. Let your

Starry Night, By Martin Willitts Jr

Starry Night By Martin Willitts Jr When darkness-filled madness shudders trees, spreading into each leaf, it’s a wonder if any of us would be left standing as a barometer of stillness — not shaken, not lost. Whatever radiance we have had would leave us, we’d feel abandoned, lost in an impression of voices no one

Wack (after Keith Haring), by Joshua Medsker

Wack (after Keith Haring) By Joshua Medsker Out on the FDR ready to cross into Queens out the window just past the Spanish Harlem Target on the back wall of a handball court a fat-lined unmouthed weathered head proclaims CRACK IS WACK with worry lines faded from 1986 as the handball bomps across the face

Woman With Plant, By Debi Swim

Woman With Plant By Debi Swim Barely 16 Ezra brought me here course it didn’t look like it does now that took a lot of back-breaking work, a lot of prayer and beseeching and a toll on body, mind and spirit. I know you’re not fond of me girl I reckon it don’t much matter

We Are Two Boats Docked, By Adrian Ernesto Cepeda

We Are Two Boats Docked By Adrian Ernesto Cepeda On the pier, this light rope clings us together floating on this water, sometimes turbulent but I know you love them waves, at high tide while I prefer tranquil stillness of low tide, either way we live for the sound of glowing salty midnight reflections, the

Ekphrastic Poetry

Special Thematic Edition 2018/2019: Ekphrastic Poetry Marc Chagall, Time Is A River Without Banks My grandfather had a clock. It flew–the grandfather clock–through the air, over the river, over the lovers, over the blue. As it now bridges time to memory, it’s as ersatz as memory goes. So we have another pastoral. What heaven would