Lady On The Beach
Tiny wisps of hair
Stirred by the breeze off the water
Whispered against her forehead…
Her eyes
searched the gray horizon;
sea and sky as one….
Oblivious to the breeze
and the sounds
of the surf pounding
Against the shore…
The wind-whipped surface
Frothed and foamed;
White caps rising
And falling rapidly…
She waited and hoped;
Her rosary beads tight
in her grip,
Fingers white
And bloodless…
The red and white
Coast Guard boat
Bobbed up and down;
A speck against the mist…
Oh my God
She prayed
Deliver them please…
She dropped to her knees
Paying no heed
To the wet sand as it
Soaked into her clothes…
She’d lost one shoe
Somewhere on the beach,
Her foot cold and wrinkled
And bleached white…
Days end was nearing.
The rain beginning to
Intensify;
slapping against her
Face and body…
She was soaked through
And through,
Her clothes clung like
A plastic shroud…
by Bud Stupi
The Wreck of the Toni Marie
You, my flesh, my son,
alone on the deck,
when the wind shifted.
A squall from the west, a cold dark cloud
between you and the shore.
A rookie mistake,
the jib, the head sail,
you approached the wind
too sharply.
This I taught you over and over
when we sailed together
in fiercer winds:
Reef the sail, pull leeward,
downward, slowly, uncoil, unfurl,
head slightly into the wind,
slacken the jib.
You in the storm,
my son, alone on the deck,
when the winds rose.
You lost our boat,
I lost my son.
by George Miller
Still Life
In the writing apartment
Charles Coghlan, P. Hobbs, Grasso, Yasir, others
Art vibrating mute witness
To accidents of life
Broken brakes and drunken longing
The Island of Dreams always day and night
An impressionist Manhattan skyline
Voyeured lovers entwined
Ancient mountains over Pennsylvania farmland
Billy Holiday’s arching throat at the Downdraft, NY circa.1947
A realism that looks like an ex-girlfriend,
She’s nude wearing big sunglass and a shawl of eels
A stoned wanton redhead in stockings black as her smeared mascara
Cover art of N.R. DeMexico 1950’s pulp fiction entitled Marijuana Girl
Trading her body for drugs and kicks…
My brother went to art school
Now he no longer paints
He has a brain tumor
And just living is his art
by JP Cashla
July 27, 1890
The shot must have scared the crows
out of the field and into the sky. They
likely had never known such a shock,
the way sound like this ruffles the air,
the sudden recognition of the sunlight
blackening everything. Returning to
the wheat field the crows must have seen
where the stalks had been stomped down,
disturbed and twisted; they must
have noticed how the space where he
had been standing felt unusually empty,
except for the abandoned easel, a fallen
brush, a snake of gold and black paint
across the spikes of still standing wheat.
by V.P. Loggins
First published in The Cape Rock (2013)
The Dance
Galleries at Maryland Hall
Bent as an old stair rail
he creeps into the gallery
crouches on the bench beneath
“White Pitcher with Bowl of Cherries”
opens his sketchbook and waits
for sweet inspiration.
Across the room a terracotta figure
emerges from the light’s glare
her glance full of secret shapes.
He unfolds his skeletal self
reaches for her hand and leads her
to dance.
Their feet clatter over the old pine boards
as they swirl past marble topped pedestals
past blue canvas spray of waves, a stand of cypress
in morning’s mist, nude bathers framed
in the bay’s gray-green-gray-blue
sunrise.
The sinews of his thin arms wrap
her sculpted shoulders. Her long skirts
crack against his ankles. She smells of garden dirt.
Wheezing, he sits again and she stands rapt again.
He will drink strong cold coffee from the white pitcher
eat two of the dark cherries.
by Louise White
Olga’s Eyes
Olga reclines, lids lowered, secrets hidden
light caressing the fine bones of her face
Olga dances out to the brick walk
“I have to hug you, I love strong women.”
Olga stumbles to the morning table, no make up
“I don’t know what I’m doing, it was a long night…”
Olga stands in the doorway in dusk of evening
in a world of her own, you cannot reach her
Olga flickers on and off like fireflies in summer
rising ever higher, disappearing when you try to catch her
Olga’s life story is in her leg muscles, her spine
the way her hands hold a dish, her perfect stillness
Olga’s eyes are an animal’s eyes caught
by a camera in the dark of the woods
Take Olga to the bay, she will swim the white paint
to the further shore and bask naked in the green
For a bed give her a bedframe under the open sky
and for heat find her a stove you can lean against a fence
Put Olga on a pedestal and she will leap to the next
Try to do her portrait, she will fight against your gaze
If you feathered Olga, she would fly. If you encased
her in clay she would break free. On a wall she is small
In a room the size of a gallery amongst the people and
pedestrians, she is all that you can see
If I go to Paris, it is Olga I want along with me
And if I were kissing women, I’d ask Olga to kiss me
by Minnie Warburton