Archetype
 
The boy, mounted on a white, shaggy, big-as-a-horse, fearsomely tusked, red-eyed,
fire-snorting boar, rides serenely through the heavens of night, Self as dark as the sky,
under the blood moon of awakening, full, round, mature, and whole, before them the blue
flower of wisdom, four eyes of insight and four arms of power, the number of completion.
In harmony, they move through the night of the unconscious, the Shadow faced, tamed,
and harnessed, unconscious made conscious, reborn through the labours of the ancient sage.
 
I dream of this dream of archetypes of night while i clean grimy salt and snow off my auto
and the day is full of the Shadows of beastly leaders.
 
Benny Charles Marcus
 
Benny Charles Marcus is a mostly unpublished poet and retired professor of sociology currently studying literature, consciousness, and the self. He lives in Willistown, PA, with his lovely wife, Marian.

​Join us for a unique experience as we explore the poetry, music, and art of Canadian legend Leonard Cohen. Cohen was once known as the "godfather of gloom," penning some of the most stunning poetry and song lyrics of our time. We will discuss Cohen's themes of human relationships, love and loss, the human condition, faith, and art through his own work and his biography, and take inspiration from his creations and art related to his themes. This two-session program includes feedback on two poems or stories.

If you aren't familiar with Cohen, join us for a journey of discovery. If you're a longtime fan, don't miss this special opportunity for in-depth discussion and creativity.

From Atop This Copper Chalice
 
Bow low, figs and almonds.
Roses, bend your stems. 
I defeated peony, vanquished larkspur, 
left slain pastry snakes in my wake. 
Their blood will slake my thirst.
Defy me at your peril, iris, 
daffodil. You’ll feel my spear 
once I dispatch this insolent tulip.

Tracy Royce

Tracy Royce’s poems have appeared in The Mackinaw, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and ONE ART. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and a Pushcart Prize, and was selected for Best Microfiction (2026). She lives in Southern California, where she enjoys hiking and watching Richard Widmark films. Find her on Bluesky.

Desert Trash
 
Georgia, draped in black, scans the desert 
in severe absorption of the sun, eyes 
beading beneath her Stetson crown to glimpse
near mounds, far peaks, the telltale 
gleam of bleached bone, antler shed
 
            or skull, pelvis, vertebrae 
            of Diné livestock shot to rot 
            for the colonization of landscape.  
 
She paints, on canvas, the desert’s leavings 
with the velvet intimacy of extraction 
smoothing harsh form, rigid aridity, into 
erotic undulations, sandstone blood-let 
to peach furring the rack-studded sky
 
            pioneering her iconography 
            of omission, her ownership 
            of Diné homeland. 
 
She called them, her treasures, boney trash,
objets d'art deployed in remaking desert 
landscapes free of the living, morphing 
over time into myth, commodity, 
cliché 
            as the Diné endured, endure 
            continuing, as always, home 
            and away, to pray.  
            
Camille LeFevre

​Camille LeFevre crafts poetry and creative nonfiction, and teaches writing workshops on art and place, from her home on the unceded lands of the Hisatsinom, Yavapai, and Apache in Northern Arizona. Her essay, “Body Topography,” published in The Dodge, was selected for the 2026 Best of the Net Anthology. Her first poetry collection, Sandstone and Kin, will be published in Fall 2026. Her work also appears in Poets for Science, wildscape.literary, Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, Metphrastics, Fugue, Unleash Literary, Electric Lit, Brevity Blog, and other publications. She’s thrilled to have her work, once again, in The Ekphrastic Review.

Female Nude (I Love Eva) 
 
I say she’s naked, but if this is a female 
nude (Pablo Picasso says this is 
a female nude) I’ll try to love and try
to love it. A female nude, 
who the painting might love, isn’t 
Eva, who never stood nude, 
let alone naked, long enough 
for rectangles and lines and half circles. 
A female nude of rectangles and lines 
of half circles of red, yellow, blue, 
orange, green, peach, (this is a boring list), isn’t 
a boring list, but a painting 
Pablo called Female Nude 
(I Love Eva) only 
in French. I don’t love Eva 
or French (like Stein I love American!) or this female 
nude, but Susie, who gets nude 
and loves rectangles of lines and half 
circles and red of orange, yellow, 
green-peach of blue, and who, like most nude 
females or female nudes, 
isn’t Eva. All things 
are shapes and colours deep down 
in the Evas in each of us hanging in frames 
on our museum walls. Our nude faces break 
like plates--a nose here, lips there, one eye
too many--but we want to be 
loved anyway. It’s the same Eva 
from a different angle and it is the same Eva 
from a different angle. It is and it is 
the same love of boring lists 
made beautiful. When I called Susie “Eva,” 
which is better than calling her “Pablo,” she turned 
 into a boring list. But boring 
isn’t boring when it’s a painting, 
and I love her, Susie of Eva, and Pablo 
with his caritas of sand and orange of oil 
and charcoal, and I love her and red 
of yellow of blue of peach of 
green, O, Eva! Eva! Eva! Eva! Eva! 
 
Matt Zambito

This poem first appeared in Another Chicago Magazine  and in the author's book, The Fantastic Congress of Oddities.

Matt Zambito is the author of The Fantastic Congress of Oddities, and two chapbooks, Guy Talk and Checks & Balances. New poems are forthcoming in Tampa Review, Slipstream, Freshwater Literary Journal, Sierra Nevada Review, and elsewhere, and he’s received awards from the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Academy of American Poets. Originally from Niagara Falls, he has lived in Ohio, Idaho, Washington, and New York, where he now resides with his rescue dog, Sadie.
 

​We are pleased to announce a new Zoom reading series! 

​Join us for our second event on Tuesday, June 9, 2026. We have a stellar lineup of ekphrastic contributors. 

Electric Ekphrasis will present five readers each session, with an extra half hour after the readings for audience questions and community conversation.

To sign up, send an email to [email protected]with ELECTRIC EKPHRASIS in the subject line. You'll get a zoom link a few days before each reading.

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The Fear and Grit of Woman
           
She packs clothing 
made of pine and wenge wood: 
two shirts, a cap, a strand of prayer beads,
and holy book wrapped in cloth.
What lies under grains of fabric?
Is this refugee baggage 
from one woman 
leaving her native country 
a vestige of what’s permitted? 
It’s not that she didn’t know 
someone could pry open
her honey-coloured suitcase
with the quilted lining 
made of heartwood and sapwood,
delve straight through
to her centre. She holds the key
and has scored the grain for narrative. 
Although pine is easier to work with, 
she sands and sands the wenge 
with fine grit paper, 
adds pale stain 
as gold as toasted coconut 
while secrets hide
tucked inside side pockets. 
Her finger traces grain
along seams and collars 
of folded shirts. 
She inhabits tensile strength
embedded in a matrix
of her history and decisions, 
with layers of cambium
fashioned of lignin and cellulose
seeping into beads
she rolls between thumb and finger.
The contrast is the dark pistol 
someone laid outside the suitcase
sanded smoother than a threat.

**

Author's Note:  Some of Abid's suitcases online don't have the weapon included. Her carvings are amazing.

​Instructions from My Mother
  
Safety first. Keep your fingers 
from the edge. Be sure to use 
the insulated trivet beneath the iron 
as it heats
or you’ll scorch the ironing board cover.
 
It’s a joke nowadays, 
“Who does ironing anymore?” 
 
But when I reach for a tablecloth 
scrunched in a drawer 
I sometimes want to iron creases out.
 
When sprucing up my office,                               
I find curtains at IKEA. I think 
the fold lines will come out 
as the fabric hangs. Many months later  
and still sometimes I think 
I’ll fetch the ironing board from upstairs,
slide the flowing white fabric from the rod,
dampen it and iron out the wrinkles. It
would be easy, if I’d only take the time.
 
Ironing used to be a household rite of passage, 
women’s work, like darning socks 
or hemming dresses. 
My mother knew to meld
the household arts of ironing and mending.
 
When she went to work full time,
Mom taught me to sprinkle water
and iron each part of a shirt: 
the front, the side with buttons, 
the side with buttonholes, 
sleeves with the knife crease, 
the cuffs, the back. And finally, 
to finish with a pucker-free collar. 
Mom said a smooth line across 
the shoulder back could make up 
for many imperfections. 
 
I can’t believe 
I’m writing about ironing, 
but by God, this was something 
in life a woman could make go smoothly. 
My modern appliance
emits wet steam at the tap of a button.
But occasionally I plug in 
my mother’s old iron
with the woven cord for little jobs 
that only need, as she would say,
“a lick and a promise.”
It’s the art of display.
Women’s work:
to make the ordinary beautiful.


* "Istri" refers to smoothing iron in Pakistan, and woman/wife in India

​
​Household Adages
 
I am a modern woman.
I do my best to iron 
out life’s wrinkles.
Perhaps only yesterday,
a vibrant CEO mixed 
her metaphors and said, 
“The contract’s ready.
The ball is in their court.
Now it’s just ironing 
out the details.”
 
Everyone knows 
to do a job well 
and get it done pronto,
for we’re all pressed for time.

Mary Ellen Talley

Mary Ellen Talley’s poems have appeared in many journals including Louisville Review, Deep Wild, and Trampoline as well as in multiple anthologies. Her chapbooks are: Postcards from the Lilac City, from Finishing Line Press, Taking Leave from Kelsay Books, and Infusion online at Red Wolf Journal. She resides in Seattle, WA and worked for many years as a school-based speech/language pathologist (SLP.) Her website is www.maryellentalley.com. 

​Claws of Wire, or the Nightmare of Simeon Solomon
 
I call it Death Awakening Sleep—where veil is drawn over a veil.
Night, Sleep, Death and the Stars, they are the themes that I love best, 
where one can live and yearn, drift and sail
 
the dark ocean of the heart, and caressed
unwearied, singing as the whale 
sings deeply, loving without watching for arrest.
 
A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep, I called my pale
poem of desire—still, vivid in its vision, dressed 
and draped with possibilities.  To hang up on a nail
 
my symbols’ sighing is the swelling of my breast
wave-like upon all shores I wish to avail
myself, reveal my glittering thick skin, to crest
 
and break, wash clean what never can be clear, bail
out my drowning passions and find rest.
But no—for me, no waiting Death with sleep.  It hails
 
not the merciful stars but, at fear’s behest,
the coupling of a white ewe and a cat, who never fail
to birth a beast with claws of wire that dig into my chest.
 
Night after night, it comes to me—the wail
of beast, the tearing of my lusty lungs.  I confess
to speak the love who dare not speak its name, frail
 
only in fidelity, and never weak in wanting.  Arrest
me if your wanting is to wreck my tale 
of beauty to a world in waiting, of mysteries unguessed.
 
I’m already pursued nightly—fresh prey to kill, assail.
Still, I love my Shadows, and scorn the sunrise in the west.
When I am buried, kept in a place firmer than a jail 
 
by weighted stone, may my dark tomb divest
dear Night of dread. Until the day break, like shattered shale,
and the shadows flee away, claws in my back, the dark is blest.

A Fancy So Probable as to Seem Like Memory

“Pre-Raphaelitism has but one principle, that of absolute, uncompromising truth in all that it does, obtained by working everything, down to the most minute detail, from nature… always endeavouring to conceive a fact as it really was likely to have happened [to make] their fancy so probable as to seem like memory.”
John Ruskin, Notes on Architecture and Art
 
I. Sappho and Erinnna in a Garden at Mytilene
 
Picture it:  
Lesbia in spring.  
 
The olives are silver moons hung on branches,
the marble bench warm from the fading sun, from
our bodies frozen here, as still as the smallest deer,
 
smaller than your little hand, grasping mine
as I bend my cheek to yours, still as the doves 
behind us, mirrored bills and coos.
 
See how even the roses fall to be near us?
See the jealous crow who cannot look away from the doves?  
 
Though you seem to look outwards, you feel
only my breath upon your rose of a cheek, roses of lips.
 
I see nothing, only feel you. 
The lyre’s been cast aside, I turn as if in movement, but 
in fact, I’m still, as nothing ever
could move me from here again.
 
II. Erinna Taken from Sappho
 
I will not even paint it. 
Pen and ink it, think it
into being, but I will not give this colour.
 
What bench is this, a beam
on which you balance your desires,
man and woman? 
 
What branch is this, leaves lost,
olives withering with my song?
 
Even the small bust of Aphrodite hunches,
hand with no heft, reaching out for nothing.
 
When I draw this, you will look anywhere 
but at him, hand swatting his 
from the unbared breast I bring now
into memory with my gaze. 
 
If there is music in this scene,
it’s yours, viewer, to play—I’ve left 
the lyre, face outward, as hers once was 
in ecstasy, as mine now never can be.  
 
III.  Simeon Solomon, Jailed 1873 and 1874
 
Picture it:  he was sixty years old, a stableman
with arms unlike any I could figure, 
the tea room not as cozy as you’d think.
 
That’s what we’d call a urinal—a “tea room,” 
or a “cottage”—some place to be alone
to feel our ways into the marble body 
of a willing man, amidst the mossy tiles,
privacy screens be damned.
 
A hand about my waist, another on my chest,
the doves were singing outside on the railing.
Bodies bending like branches towards water 
or sun, we rose and we fell, 
 
and fell again, tried and sentenced. 
 
“Maybe,” I thought, my time up and done,
“I will love Paris in the spring time.”
 
I fell again. Again.
 
I found a bench in the park, 
wine red as roses, lived on olives,
a still life no one ever saw for me, 
where, like my angels, I am sometimes without shoes.
 
But even if the memory of me fades for you,
an over-exposed print, the ashes of a letter,
I’ll find some paint,
thieve gold leaf and belief from other stores,
and try to paint my love again. 

**

​Unhealthy Tendencies:  Sappho and Erinna at Mytilene
 
In the finished work, you grasp the girl mid-swoon, 
your strong cheek upon softer face, uncertain 
of her fate, desire pulling like the moon.
All moonlight, your arms envelop, a tidal curtain
rushes shifting sands of her receding dress.  Not one
of her arms reaches out for you—it seems one hand
instead now pulls her garnet draping down, prize won, 
or seeks to push yours off, eyes watchful of the land.
 
But why look at the hands, when it’s the knees that know?
They slide like sailboats on the watercolour gowns,
hers crashes on your thigh, sharp undertow
pushes your own knee towards her hidden down.
 
Adrift, your own face loses self in lust;
but her face looks at us and can’t know who to trust. 

Monstrance
 
Who sees a monster in a monstrance
when anyone else sees God?
 
Who sees the mystery of faith
when someone else sees something odd?
 
Monere is to warn
monstrum is an omen or a portent,
 
but monstrare is to show
and the monstrance is proof of content.
 
The critics saw the white and gold, 
the intense spirit of the composition.
 
The homophobes saw blue eyes
staring at a staff, a degradation.
 
He saw the symbol of an eye held fast 
on higher meaning.
 
I saw the way love’s mystery 
refused a moral cleaning.
 
By moral, I only mean the faith
of feeling God as father.
 
By monstrance, we mean 
the vision of the other.
 

Study for the Head of Sappho
 
Erotics are for galleries, for readers.
For Swinburne and Rossetti, it’s an antic, 
a way for Buchanan and his Fleshly School of Poetry 
to stare, read over and over, making sure 
the sin is there.
 
But studies have no obligation to any eye but 
the one who seeks to see the head as it is alone--
away from the sun rising, Donne’s saucy pedantic wretch,
this woman’s self, the silence of the night.
 
Away from the bigger scene, the sightlines soften,
instead of desire panting on a cheek, the mouth is gentle,
milk-fed mouth, eyes closed as if she is the one who will be kissed,
not pressing into flesh but floating, graphite light
on textured paper apart from watercolour skin.
Apart, the lips can speak instead of kiss,
not even dreaming of what they miss.
 
She is not sensual but separate, as if inhaling her own name,
the Sappho curling upwards, exhaled
by the snake-like signature of someone who senses
there’s more to one’s mystic soul than sex revealed.
 
Bryn Gribben

Bryn Gribben is a poet and essayist who left academia to write and explore antiques.  Her essay "Cabin" was nominated for a 2019 Pushcart Prize, and she was a finalist both for the 2021 Creative Nonfiction Porch Prize and the Peseroff Prize in poetry.  Bryn's first book, a musical memoir, Amplified Heart:  An Emotional Discography, was published by Otherwords Press in 2022. She lives in Seattle with two cats and a love song of a husband. She just finished her second manuscript, The Patron Saints of Stuff, a series of personal essays about working in an antiques mall.