Dear Ekphrastic Challengees, An inspiring ekphrastic challenge for you to start February 2024 with, this challenge is based on the encaustic art of Kelly Austin-Rolo. Kelly’s studio is based in Denver, CO, where I had the grand pleasure of meeting her, and of adoring the beauty of her artworks. She is an artist who is curious and open to learn about and work with all sorts of different media. As she states on her website https://kellyaustinrolo.com/ : “Every day brings something new,” and this was the energy and enthusiasm she showed in her atelier. I hope you will be properly prompted by Green Terrain (2019), and as Kelly mentions: “Green Terrain holds a special place and I would love to see and feel others' response to it”. Thank you for submitting your pieces, I am looking forward to reading your writing. Thank you Kelly, for your art and permission, thank you Lorette, for being TER’s life force. Be good, Kate Copeland ** Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. The prompt this time is Green Terrain, by Kelly Austin-Rolo. Deadline is February 16, 2024. You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. The Rules 1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination. 2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way. 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY. Send your work to ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry. 5.Include AUSTIN-ROLO CHALLENGE in the subject line. 6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight EST, February 16, 2024. 9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is. 10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 15. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages! 16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.
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Dear Ekphrastic Writers, You are my people. Many of you have become friends, exchanging emails, sharing poetry news, and turning The Ekphrastic Review into a home and place for inspiring workshops. Of course, we have our own Queen Bee, Lorette C. Luzajic, to thank for that. This challenge brought in a record number of responses (at least for challenges I’ve judged), which means it was even harder than usual for me to narrow my selections. As TER regularly tells us, it’s good to have a blend of regulars and new talent, as well as a variety of approaches. I was pleased to name TWO high school students (from the same school) and a retired beekeeper in my dozen finalists. A big THANK YOU TO ARTIST Noah Jayne Andrews for inspiring our contestants! Writers, take a bow. I was almost as delighted by your praise for Noah’s art as I was to read the wide variety of your responses. Please visit noahjayneart.com to learn more about her and her artwork. (I suspect these three weeks have seemed a long wait for Noah Jayne. I know she’s excited to see your creations.) Thanks always to Lorette C. Luzajic for bringing our ekphrastic community together. Happy reading! Alarie Tennille ** Does anyone know that behind the glamour lashes beyond the spiffy nails beneath the furs in spite of the sparkle you hide a lethal stinger? Laura Rovi Laura Rovi is an assistant librarian in northern WI, USA. Often, she reads. Sometimes, she writes. ** Wilson's Corners Still Buzzes About Her Auntie Delphine, a bee's knees, being blown to New York on a wind across our Wisconsin meadow, to wildflower in the city, to speakeasy and hive jive in pearls. Auntie Delphine freezing as a worker bee, a spent blossom with chipped red polish, in an alley off 41st Street for, it's whispered, a dope drone promising honey. Karen Walker Karen Walker (she/her) is in a basement in Ontario. Her work is in Centaur, Flash Boulevard, The Hooghley Review, voidspace zine, Brink, Overheard, and elsewhere. @kawalker.bsky.social ** Long Live the Queen She’s ready now. They’ve fed her royally as befits her station. She’s groomed and pampered, decked in the finest furs and fripperies. She’s ready now, eyeing up her suitors as they fly above with fire in their bellies. None will survive the encounter. When their job is done so are they, as they surely fall back down to earth. She’s ready now to lay and lay and lay and in return she’ll be fed and watered, groomed and pampered, while her fertility and proficiency is closely inspected by her servants. So when her laying slows they make another from her own egg, in her own image to be groomed and pampered and decked in the finest furs and fripperies and when she’s ready they’ll kill the old and lay her to rest. The old queen is dead! Long live the queen! She’s ready now! Lynn White Lynn White is a retired bee-keeper who lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Consequence Magazine, Firewords, Vagabond Press, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes Journal. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com ** Queen Bee I have an eye for jewelry I am not pretty, I am glamorous People love me, want to become me But deep down inside I worry I worry that people will see the real me And hate me Hiding behind the confident smiles I am insecure Worried about every thought that passes through Others minds Behind all the makeup and glitter Are bruises and scars From brothers much older then I Under all the mean comments to others I make Are little voices that question My every move I hate who I’ve become But how can I change? Seri Cummings Seri Cummings is a sophomore at Herriman High School in Herriman, Utah who loves to read and cook. ** He is the Queen Bee He is the queen bee. Our world is like the hive. Instead of the matriarchy we have a patriarchy. He is the queen bee. I sting once and I die. He can sting as many times as he wants and he gets no repercussions. He is the queen bee. He orders everyone around. He lets other people do his bidding. He is the queen bee. He has a pheromone that leaves no room for contentment. If he’s in a bad mood, he makes it known. It is then everyone’s problem. He is the queen bee. He’s convinced that if he were to die, the whole world would spiral. He’s convinced anything and everything is made for him. In actuality, he’s not much bigger than the rest, just his ego is. He is the queen bee. Paityn Burns Paityn Burns is an involved high school theatre student who lives in Herriman, Utah, and attends Herriman High as a senior. ** Hollywood Avatar You could be a movie star a multitasking Hollywood avatar wearing diamante tassel earrings. You could outshine them bigwigs be the queen of their ant colony cool as a cucumber, never wobbly if you put your mind to it you could do almost anything, legit. I would even buy your picture. Ask if you would sign it. And feel ten times richer. You are one specimen that cannot be contained of course, you'll need to be subordinate follow your true, unique path take your chosen direction at every impasse find a new strategy to climb and like every good actress, learn to mime. Failing that? I'll share a bottle of cognac or hold hands over chilled champagne. Mark Andrew Heathcote Mark Andrew Heathcote is an adult learning difficulties support worker. He has poems published in journals, magazines, and anthologies online and in print. He resides in the UK and is from Manchester. Mark is the author of In Perpetuity and Back on Earth, two books of poems published by Creative Talents Unleashed. ** Slay, Queen! The three of them stood near the entrance, droning on. Busboys were such gossips, especially when there was a true celebrity arriving, full entourage in tow and all the paparazzi getting in on the act. Flash bulbs popped and camera shutters snapped away. Queenie posed nonchalantly. She was always comfortable being in the limelight. She felt she'd be born to it. The busboys agreed there was an unmistakable buzz around Queenie. Busboy A: "She's really found her signature style." Busboy B: "Oh yes, a cocoon coat, how very appropriate! How very her. And that fur collar, it's to die for!" Busboy C: "And that gorgeous soft black velvet cloche hat. How fitting. How on trend." Busboy A: "It's perfectly complementing her mascara. I could drown in those eyes." Busboy B: "And her nails. That must be the latest shade of vermillion." Busboy C: "Queenie's always been my favourite. She's fierce with a capital F. And she's here tonight to slay!" Busboy B: "Oh, bee-have! She'd eat you up for breakfast." Queenie, half listening, savoured every moment of the attention. After all, she deserved it. Emily Tee Emily Tee writes poetry and flash fiction. She's had recent pieces published in The Ekphrastic ReviewChallenges, Whale Road Review and elsewhere online, and in print in Poetry Scotland and several anthologies. Emily is also the judge of the monthly ekphrastic poetry contest run by The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press. She lives in the UK. ** Queen Bee It was the summer of nectar, the nightclub buzzing with lust as he made a beeline for her, irresistible in leather and fur adorned in beaded dewdrops with lips that tasted of pollen. How she loved the purr and hum of the Harley-Davidson, the sticky ooze of its oil grazing the slickened road, goggles sealed beneath her chin, black jacket stitched to skin. She loved him then, the way he stood out in a crowd, all the fussing, the flirting, that speed at which they kissed the wind with the grace of skaters swerving over flowers and curbs. What happened to adventure? At what point did she tire of his constant droning, on and on, urging her to rest, build a nest? The matriarch dying in a hive of activity. How easily he was replaced, the natural order restored. These expectations, obligations exhaust her; she longs to taste the sweet sun on her tongue, to feel that sting in her tail. Kate Young Kate Young lives in England and enjoys writing poetry, painting and playing the guitar, ukulele, and mandolin. Her poems have appeared in various webzines, magazines, and chapbooks. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlet A Spark in the Darkness has been published by Hedgehog Press and her next pamphlet Beyond the School Gate is due to be published soon. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet. ** Portrait of the Queen She was born to be a queen, the Mother of the bees. Her fur is soft and supple. Her eye looks straight at me. She’s alluring, she’s a priestess, and, now and then, a scamp. She knows the way to work a room, exactly how to dress– when to enter, when to leave– how to shimmy with the best. She’s stunningly seductive, provocative, and camp. Has no question of her place. She was fed on royal jelly put an end to all her rivals this bee queen Machiavelli. She’s a danger, she’s a warning. She’s a Siren, she’s a vamp. For days she’s sat here on my desk, this haughty queen of bees, and though I’ve work to do she’s called out to me. I’d like to crawl into her portrait get deep into her skin find out how she learned to make her way with men. to don her regal swagger, grab her gift of rare esprit, for she’s the very femme fatale I often long to be. Ursula Shepherd Ursula Shepherd spent her professional life as an ecologist and biogeographer. She has watched the world dry and heat, and species go extinct. She has also delighted in the planet’s beauty and writes in warning and wonder. She is the author of a book, Nature Notes: A Notebook Companion for the Seasons, as well as essays and non-fiction pieces and has recently returned to poetry. Her poetry has appeared in, among others, Unbroken, Minnow, Grim and Gilded, Passionfruit, The Orchards, and previously in The Ekphrastic Review. ** Bad Women My aunt was fur and long red fingernails, she was Arpège and hats with veils, worn at an angle. She was dare and devil, bewitching and hot of temper. Oh, the temper. There was a buzz about her. When she walked (she never tottered) on heels that reached into the sky, there was a swishing sound of silk and taffeta rubbing and inviting lude thoughts. I read the thoughts in men’s eyes when they watched her pass. She was earrings that pulled the earlobes down with their weight-- glass, not diamonds. It was said she had lovers. There were other aunts who had husbands. She was everything I wanted to be when I grew up, and I was prepared to pay the price of nasty whispers behind gloved hand, raised eyebrows, jealous looks that could kill. I’d watch her lift up her chin, raise her long cigarette holder, and smile. Rose Mary Boehm Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as eight poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was three times nominated for a Pushcart and once for Best of Net. Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders? (Kelsay Books July 2022), Whistling In The Dark (Cyberwit July 2022), and Saudade (December 2022) are available on Amazon. Also available on Amazon is a new collection, Life Stuff, published by Kelsay Books November 2023. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/ ** Biggest Bummer about Being Queen? That’s a cinch, it’s the constant expectations. It’s always sip, sip, sip, mate, mate, mate, lay, lay, lay, so tonight, that’s why we’re standing right here by the front door, eggs dropped, hive larvae tucked up … Yes of course, nannies there and drones foraging, which means I’m choosing, just this once, to scarper. Can’t I scrap my duties for this rare flight out? Glad you agree. Go ahead and take the shot. You mean the beret? Yes, chic isn’t it? French. Thanks, it’s velvet, so cosy with this fur stole over my low-cut evening gown. I’d show you, but don’t want to smudge my freshly lacquered nails. Oh, great you noticed! They do match my spiked heels and set off my diamonds and pearls. Shall I smile? Makes my eyes sparkle you say? My best feature I think, though of course the workers disagree. Haha! They’re new vegan lash wispies, glued on and my antennae have been specially curled. Cheers! Let’s abscond from all this royal jelly and fussy buzz. One last spray of Gucci Bloom and it’s time. Madame Butterfly, here we come. Helen Freeman Helen loves trying her hand at the prompts on The Ekphrastic Review when the artwork catches her eye. She has poems published on various sites and magazines and currently lives in Durham, England. Instagram @chemchemi.hf ** Incognito I got out. Finally. So often I’d dreamed of the Outside. Oh, how often. But they kept me there, ruler of their kingdom, as if it was my dream. But I only dreamed of the Outside. All my babies flew the nest, season after season, and there I remained. A baby-making machine. Egg after egg after egg. Hive mind always sensed what would happen next. So I couldn’t escape. I was trapped and pampered. The walls of my haven, a cage of incubation. I wanted out. I didn’t know what Out was. It took me so long to be brave and learn. I was too big to escape. What hidey hole was there for me? What way to get free? Such a farce to be queen. There is no true power in this. It’s a beautiful prison but a prison nonetheless. There are none like you and no one cares. No one knows you. You give and give and they take. Who would understand your aches? I had to be my own knight in shining armour. I had a stinger and I would use it if it killed me. Which it would. Better that than live the rest of my days breeding, breeding endlessly. The endless egg woman. My body, but not my body. Then. Oh then, one day. My wish came true. One day, I finally used my wings. Feeble at first, they were, weak from lack of use, but I gave it all I had. It was a balmy season, there was warmth, I remember. The colonies were out that afternoon. Nectar duty. I had some time. Not much, but enough. I’d laid my eggs for the day and feigned rest. So my other minions would suspect nothing. But all the time I was spying. Spying for a way out. And all of a sudden, as the hive walls were being rebuilt by the longstanding ones, I spied a hole. A tiny hexagon of light. A beam of holy ray. Just shining. As if for me. So close it was, so close and almost striking me. And I was afraid. But I knew too that my chance would not come again and I would surely perish if I didn’t leave now. Now. So I got up and made to fly. It took me several tries but I reached the holy light. Yet the next hurdle was to be overcome. I got stuck, I could not fit through. My womanly girth would not allow me. So. I ate my way out. Ate the hole bigger and bumbled through. The longstanding ones stood aside, buzzing wildly. Calling me back. No, I said. No. Clumsy and drunk-flying, I flew. Flew, then tumbled to the ground. Onto a bed of leaves. And my God, the sensations! Light, breeze, sound, all these new vibrations! So this was the Outside! I shivered with pleasure and went along my way. I never looked back. Now I go around incognito. The colonies couldn’t find me. No doubt they have a new queen now. I met others like me, others who’d got out. We have our own special circle. We meet when opportune, when the equation of seasons allows. Life is good on the Outside. I love my new life. I need never be the egg woman again. Nina Nazir Nina Nazir (she/her) is a British Pakistani artist, poet and teacher based in Birmingham, UK. She's had work published in various journals, including The Ekphrastic Review, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Free Verse Revolution, Unlost Journal, Messy Misfits Club, Harana Poetry and Visual Verse among others. She has work forthcoming in Laughing Ronin Press and Sunday Mornings at the River. When she's not teaching, she's making art or poems. Other than that, she can usually be found with her nose in a book in her favourite local café, but also on Instagram: @nina.s.nazir and X (Twitter): @NusraNazir Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. The prompt this time is In the Clouds, by Jacek Malczewski. Deadline is February 2, 2024. You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. The Rules 1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination. 2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way. 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY. Send your work to ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry. 5.Include MALCZEWSKI CHALLENGE in the subject line. 6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight EST, February 2, 2024. 9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is. 10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 15. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages! 16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly. Dear Ekphrastic Challengees, Thank you all so much for submitting your Plastic-provoked pieces to The Ekphrastic Review. A challenging challenge it was; I was quite taken by your thoughts and images re Von Wong’s artwork. Do enjoy the compilation below, and do keep on thinking and writing and discussing art and environment. And anything you would like to think on and write about, of course! Congratulations everyone, hurrah for TER and for dear Lorette! Thank you all, wishing you a grand 2024, Kate Copeland ** Plastic Pipeline “He’s got a plastic heart, plastic teeth and toes, plastic knees and a perfect plastic nose. He’s got plastic lips that hide his plastic teeth and gums”, so sang the Kinks then, about their plastic man in 1969. Now in the twenty-first century it seems he’s here as plastic gushes everywhere over land, over sea and into our very being as plastics ingested from our food, and inhaled in from the air we breath become part of our bodies, part of ourselves to be inherited by our children. We fill every hole in the ground and soon the sea will be transformed into plastic land. We re-cycle it by the shipload from rich places to poor, places where the people don’t matter, where “plastic man don’t feel no pain”. There we dump it on the newly plasticised people in the plastic land we’ve created for them. Lynn White Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Consequence Magazine, Firewords, Vagabond Press, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes Journal. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com///www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/ ** To Care a double triolet Crow picks up masks, cups and paper, lines nest Boy’s invention funnels plastic from sea Buy food in glass, not plastic, do my best Crow picks up masks, cups and paper, lines nest Teacher speaks conservation to the rest To listen, to care, hear earth’s heartfelt plea Crow picks up masks, cups and paper, lines nest Boy’s invention funnels plastic from sea It’s not too late to care, find other ways Walk more, drive much less –emit fewer fumes I use less heat, wear warmer clothes these days It’s not too late to care, find other ways Better act now than wait, see how it plays out, our children will now learn in classrooms It’s not too late to care, find other ways Walk more, drive much less –emit fewer fumes Julie A. Dickson Julie A. Dickson writes about nature, animals in captivity, environment and bullying. Her poems have appeared in Open Door, Sledgehammer, FLRE, The Ekphrastic Review and other journals; full length works are available on Amazon. A Pushcart nominee for her poem, "The Sky Must Remember," Dickson is a captive elephant advocate and lover of feral cat TNR. ** To Benjamin Von Wong Regarding Giant Plastic Tap What problems does such valve create or leave no longer solved concealed that you insinuate are better unresolved? While art indeed can advertise -- as noble -- worthy cause the risk it oversimplifies should give the artist pause. Far better I would find your thought if trickling from your tap were single uses we have sought to spare us from the trap that plastic bags and tubes avert by science dripped that we assert. Epilogue The point I make does not assail the urgency to say we -- circumspectly -- must not fail to find a better way. Portly Bard Portly Bard: Old man. Ekphrastic fan. Prefers to craft with sole intent of verse becoming complement... ...and by such homage being lent... ideally also compliment. Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise… for words but from returning gaze… far more aware of fortune art… becomes to eyes that fathom heart. ** No Genie in These Bottles A sandy beach, I tried to walk across it. My way was blocked by an enormous faucet Suspended in the air—no pipe or post-- It spewed used bottles all along coast. I’ve never seen such plastic in one place. A seaside ecological disgrace. And yet it seemed quite beautiful as well, The shapes and colors balanced out the smell. An artist named Von Wong created it. Some people liked it, others hated it. Although it’s sad to say, I must confess That my lifestyle contributes to the mess. Detergent, water, soda pop, and more Contribute to the trash along the shore. Recycling seems to help a little bit But nothing seems to bring an end to it. For life with plastic bottles will go on As long as we accept it with a yawn. James A. Tweedie James A. Tweedie has lived in California, Utah, Scotland, Australia, Hawaii, and presently in Long Beach, Washington. He has published six novels, four collections of poetry, and one collection of short stories with Dunecrest Press. His award-winning poetry has appeared both nationally and internationally in both online and print media. Among his awards for poetry are First Place honours in the Society of Classical Poets 2021 International Poetry Competition; Quarterly Prize Best Poem from The Lyric; First Place in the 2022 100 Days of Dante Poetry Competition; and the Laureate Choice Award in the 2021 Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest. ** Earth’s Destroyer Giant plastic tap, meaningless and carelessness, destroying the earth. Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher has been writing since 2010 and has had many micro-flash fiction stories published. In 2018 her book Shorts for the Short Story Enthusiasts, was published, The Importance of Being Short, in 2019 and In A Flash in 2022. She currently resides on Long Island, New York with her husband Richard and dogs Lucy and Breanna. ** 2042 my god is everlasting. how couldn’t he be? his robe is rigid & reflective & kissed with sweat, the scripture is an oesophageal tube; rooted through the grounds of the church. all of it, the sandy dunes and the polyester ocean, choked with the phlegm of the anemones and the half-melted exhales of the confessional. when we kneel in the church of plastic, we wear knee guards made of ancient tongues. the rubble of yesterday’s world is our uniform. we pray to be everlasting. our god tells us, clearly: the oceans will run dry, and so will your townships. the clouds will fear the arid world, and instead visit your replacement planets. the only thing that you can do is be delightfully inorganic. the stench of hot plastic is heaven; ascension. i feel each vessel in my body, every microbe, as a part of the production line; our final prayer! we will be made, everlasting. Dorian Winter Dorian Winter is a writer & artist harking from Boorloo, Western Australia, inspired by the visceral, the archetypal, and the unconscious. His poetry and artworks have been published in Pelican Magazine, Echo Literary Magazine, and The Battering Ram. Additionally, he is the editor-in-chief of emerging international literary journal Antler Velvet. Website: dorianwinter.com ** Scarecrow Once she’s done sweating us out of her pores, heaving us out with floods and conflagrations, she’ll set to work to balance, to restore, to heal extinctions with her new creations. As she takes time to make fresh, fertile soil out of our piles of refuse and our bones, turn reckless plastics back to buried oil, cleanse war-scarred rubble down to simple stones, Will she be thorough? Or not quite erase all of our works, but leave some scars and stains, so all her future creatures mark our trace: our petrified possessions and remains? This way, perhaps, she can scare back to sense those tempted to ape Homo sapiens. Yana Kane Yana Kane came to the United States as a refugee from the USSR. She holds a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University, and a PhD in Statistics from Cornell University. Having retired after a successful technical career, she is pursuing an MFA in Literary Translation and Poetry at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Her recent and upcoming publications include 128 LIT, Allium, American Chordata, EastWest Literary Forum, The Los Angeles Review, Platform Review, RHINO Poetry, and Точка.Зрения/View.Point. View.Point recognized her translations of poetry of witness from Ukraine and Russia as among the "Best of 2022." 128 LIT nominated her translation for the Deep Vellum Best Literary Translations Anthology 2025. Her bilingual poetry book, Kingfisher/Зимородок, was published in 2020. ** Molded by Madness From rise to set, sun penetrates as clouds of ancient warning brew; from rise to fall, the tide recalls, both waving, drowning, laps increase. Our stalwart trees store while they stand, but bark out shrinking rings unheard. So much laid out here, sands of time, this scene screened - though that sun less so - the scree we see, but blind, our lot, as stumble, tumbling, rubble drop. We tick as plus, recycle box, a make of plastic, self inflict, because we’re molded, present past, though imperfect, uncertain, tense. Such giant steppes slow claim the globe, dismissed as stuff of fairy tales. But it’s not wicked, which to face, for if ignored, the choice is made; lagoons, retreat reefs of the rich soon lost at sea, no landing, stripped. Dust devils swirl from stranded sand, the islands soon to be engulfed, and plastic balls once played on beach long overshot as pellets, brine. We’re woken, force of faucet gush, but stop the cock, up underneath. Poor pupils for the insights known, we focus imperceptible, sea, sky and tree with constancy, but not ice melt, seep, drip of tap. Stephen Kingsnorth Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com ** happy to serve you the baby reaches for plastic first not wood not cotton the plastic feels like skin. sticky, good for gumming smooth to the touch the baby has no opinion on pollution. the baby has not yet seen a white plastic bag forest or a white plastic bag flying like a ghost or clinging to chainlink like a surrender flag. the baby doesn't know the word recycling yet. the differences between #4 (bubble wrap) #2 (shampoo bottles) #1 (clamshell containers) later, the baby will find it ironic that #1 is named after a bivalve mollusc like the one her mother lifted from wet sand as a child and regarded as an alien its silky, cloudy lip. its shell, a heavy stone, fitting so perfectly into her hand. she wanted to take it home but she put it back into the river so it could breathe again. DJ Wolfinsohn DJ (Debby) Wolfinsohn has written about movies and music for a variety of publications for many years. Her stories/poems appear in Vestal Review, HAD, Memoir Mixtapes, and others. Her 'zine is in the Rock 'N Roll Hall of Fame and is part of New York University's Riot Grrrl Archives. She lives in the Austin version of the Brady Bunch house, sharing it with 3 humans, 3 animals and 300 plants. Find her on twitter @debbywolfinsohn or debbywolfinsohn.journoportfolio.com. ** Plastic-Fantastic a cautionary tale in two parts i 1950 "Is it...magic? It's so light!" Cindy Johnson held the slim blue bottle up to the light, admiring its translucent gleam. "No, my dear, not magic. It's called plastic. The guys in the lab cooked it up from the leftovers from refining gasoline. Here, have a look at these." Cindy's husband Jim passed her a small red box and a shiny white plate. "Just a few early samples. The stuff's so flexible, it can be any colour and we can mould it into almost any shape - bottles, dishes, cartons, you name it. No more cutting down trees, or expensive pottery kilns, or furnaces for glass and steel. And no need for carpenters, potters or glass-blowers. It won't warp or rot when it gets wet and it doesn't tear or break. It's wipe-clean too, and so cheap it doesn't matter if you lose it or throw it away. It really is the future!" "And it's so pretty! The colours are so bright." Cindy looked at the thin, light plate, glowing under the white glare of electric light. "If only you could make clothes out of it too." "Say, that's not a bad idea. I'm sure one of the guys could work out a way." Jim Johnson continued, "If we can spin it into a thread we could weave with it." He tapped his finger on his chin, momentarily lost in thought and then gave his wife a thousand watt smile. "We're only just discovering what plastic can do. It's going to revolutionise the world." ii 2050 Kayla Hendricks checked the solar array and water-cell batteries. Good, enough power stored for the long range radio. The daily check-in call was shorter now, with only five remaining stations since Station Ten stopped attending a few weeks ago. The Alaskan outpost had been the last of the North American stations on the network. Worryingly, their final report had mentioned nearby sightings of the Grey Wave. Kayla's companion on day watch was Shanto Iversen. He seemed to read her mind, saying, "Not much chance of it here, all the way down on the southern tip of Aotearoa, Kayla. One of the few things we Pacific Islanders got right, banning that bacterium. Too good to be true, something that'd gobble up all the plastic waste with no side effects." Kayla gave a thin smile. "Yes, after the fiascos with cane toads and rabbits we finally learned the hard way. I'm keen to hear from Station Seven if they have any new drone reports from the Pacific Garbage Patch Gyre. That's where the Grey Wave will turn up first round here, I'm sure of it." "All the plastic garbage - hell, any kind of garbage - is ancient history, Kayla. No-one's been pumping out trash since the end of industrialisation when the big landmasses got swarmed by the Wave, and you know all new plastic was banned back in Thirty-Six." "It's not just the feed plastic, it's the currents, Shanto. We had all that ice melt in the late Twenties and the Gyres have been increasingly erratic. Don't forget that plastic spew off Tasmania last year." "Double-edged sword if you ask me. The Aussie plastic miners salvaged a load of good stuff for re-use. Valuable resources for their communities." "How can you say that? We've been trying to decontaminate ourselves from that plastic muck for decades." "Look, Kayla, you're a lot younger than me. I can still remember when plastic was allowed, before the first Grey Wave emerged. Back then we still had air travel, takeaway food, grocery stores, toys! We had towns and cities, places with more than a couple of dozen people living there. Not this foraged half-existence that we're scraping together! Sometimes I..." The radio crackled into life, interrupting. As he reached to hit transmit, Shanto said, "Best paste on a smile, Kayla, and sound positive for our buds out there. Only a few thousand people in known contact around the globe, we can't have them thinking we're in mental meltdown, can we?" Emily Tee Emily Tee writes poetry and flash fiction. She's had recent pieces published in Ekphrastic Review Challenges, Visual Verse, Blue Heron Review, Whale Road Review and elsewhere online, and in print in Poetry Scotland and several anthologies. Emily is also the judge of the monthly ekphrastic poetry contest run by The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press. She lives in the UK. ** Conservation Class We often eye-rolled at our uncle the naturalist who turned off the tap while brushing his teeth in the 60s before climate consciousness evolved into a movement; we undertook our meager share picking up tossed cans and bottles on Plum Island where birders and streakers spent weekends pursuing their hobbies; we may have covered our eyes but never forgot the lesson. Elaine Sorrentino Elaine Sorrentino, communications director by day, poet by night, has been published in Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Ekphrastic Review, Writing in a Women’s Voice, Global Poemic, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Agape Review, Haiku Universe, Sparks of Calliope, Muddy River Poetry Review, Panoply, Etched Onyx Magazine, and at wildamorris.blogspot.com. She was featured on a poetry podcast at Onyx Publications. ** A Magus in the Sand -after Gerald Stern What I took to be the bleached scapula of a whale turned out to be the door of a plane nesting between the cleavage of sand dunes. What I took to be an orb of quartz turned out to be the severed head of a doll, imprisoned in the gray, unearthly light. What I took to be driftwood turned out to be toilet-cleaner bottles, milk cartons, and floats, placid and gaunt. What I took to be a gannet’s orchid-shaped bone turned out to be plastic pansies peeping beneath a stone. What I took to be a lost Eden was an abandoned home. What I took were the scapula, orb, driftwood, and bone, those things death or weather had transformed. Louhi Pohjola Louhi Pohjola was born in Montreal, Canada, to Finnish immigrant parents. She was a cell and molecular biologist before teaching sciences and humanities in a small high school in southern Oregon. She is an avid fly-fisherwoman and river rock connoisseur. She enjoys fibre arts, reading, and chamber music and is obsessed with black holes and octopi. Louhi lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and her temperamental terrier. The latter thinks that he is a cat. ** I overhear them muse on anti-natalism The bloodline will end with us they resolve, for who with a grain of conscience would want to yoke new lives to the hellscape that opens beyond? Swimming back in time, I tread water to look up at the suspended flotsam of reckless aeons—skimming the fine line between death and hedonism—a cache of years, paused, rarely fretting about the future—so invincible was the armoured high of youth coursing on the toss of a lucky tarot, all hope and ambition mixed in swilling currents and daredevilry was all that counted, never thinking that one would live to see another sunrise, much less stand transformed, reformed, to bring forth and hold such precious seeds. And now they fold away-- discontent clutter-heavy in the world conferred on them, and I hear them and their kind-- wise eyes, awakened minds resigned, the halo of their tragic beauty beaded by the water’s edge, resolved to bring no more beings into the debris of existence, only to walk amid what is left and then to fade without bearing fruit in this ripple of ruin this incessant drip of rust and waste, this imploding heap-- the legacy of leached sands and defiled oceans flowing slowly, running dry. Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is an Indian-Australian artist, poet, and improv pianist. Her art and poetry have been published in various print and online literary journals and anthologies including Cordite Poetry Review, Bracken Magazine, and Black Bough Poetry. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net, and was a finalist in the Dai Fry Memorial Award for Mystical Poetry 2022 (Wales). Her chapbook, Patchwork Fugue, is forthcoming from Atomic Bohemian Press in February 2024. She lives and works in Sydney on traditional Gammeragal land. Find her @oormilaprahlad and www.instagram.com/oormila_paintings ** Von Wong's Plastic Tap (a Mirror Cinquain) Tiny plastic droplets unnoticed one by one spigot to beach to ocean tide, sucked by waves to a netherworld, statehood of of debris, faucet drips manifested, as plastic DNA. Daniel Brown Daniel Brown began 2024 as he has for years; writing each morning looking at the elm trees and pond outside his window. A year ago at age 72 he published his first collection Family Portraits in Verse and Other Illustrated Poems through Epigraph Books, Rhinebeck, NY. In the coming year he will continue to write and submit poems about music, art and whatever else catches his imagination. ** Upon Peering at a Plastic Tap Sculpture vessels subdue endless iterations of distorted worlds murky reflections of trees and sun and sky these reflections contain the schemes of industry schemes have been distilled and sizzle as if from a flask the chemicals that steam could fill a sky with smog the sky is a vault that contains the dreams of poets and poets derive from that vault a linguistic alchemy and this alchemy hinges upon the clarity of the azure so to witness a giant tap pour out vessel upon vessel vessels as the things that accrue to suspend the tap and each vessel drips with the thirst of multinationals a relentless thirst that hydrous worlds will never quell a universe could be in each bottle and all would be consumed and the thirsty ones would become thirstier thereafter the sandbars would catch similar waves of the tides and the tidal foam would billow from the same sea Efren Laya Cruzada Efren Laya Cruzada is a poet who was born in the Philippines and raised in the small town of Alice, Texas. He studied English and American Literature and Creative Writing at New York University. He is the author of Grand Flood: a poem. His poems have been published in many journals, most recently in Tiny Seed Literary Journal, The Tiger Moth Review, and Discretionary Love. He now resides in Austin, Texas. ** Momentarily Yours, Forever Hers healthy hair healthy body milk it does your body good drink more water cleans your clothes better makes your skin softer fresh breath fresh laundry freshly squeezed all packaged for your convenience in single serving bottles for your health for the health of your children for the health of all children but not for our Mother who is choking on the shells of our discarded choices Michele Cacano Michele Cacano lives in Seattle with one spouse and two cats. She is a self-employed LMT who writes poetry, short horror, HF, SF, NF, and more. Since 2007, she has led the Seattle Writers Meetup Group through weekly critiques and ongoing support. Find her on chillsubs.com and @MicheleCacano on Twitter and Instagram. ** Washing Hands I’m told that washing was easy in 2023 when water was plentiful but tasted gritty like the sand in which they buried their heads. I twist the tap, wait for the familiar rumble and grumble of methane pipes to exhume their tumble of plastic on greased palm. There is something satisfying in the rub of garbage on thumb, the stink of take-away tangling with skin and polyethene limbs. So much filth spread over beaches beneath a scorching sky, temperatures rising with the lies we have been fed. How easily they roll off the tongue. Kate Young Kate Young lives in England and enjoys writing poetry, painting and playing the guitar, ukulele and mandolin. Her poems have appeared in various webzines, magazines, and chapbooks. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlet A Spark in the Darkness has been published by Hedgehog Press and her next pamphlet Beyond the School Gate is due to be published soon. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet. ** How to Swim from Half Moon Bay, California to Shanghai, China Wait an hour after eating. Shower before you enter the water. Bring pepper spray for sharks. Bring mesh bags. Bring balloons. Stop checking your phone. Watch for oil tankers. Sing along with humpbacks. Learn to love plankton. Steer for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Gather plastic into mesh bags. Blow up balloons, attach to bags. A boat will follow and gather. Pause in the warm bath of El Niño. Wash hair. Rinse. Repeat. Twice a day swish your mouth with wave water. Saline is good for dental health. One weary morning when every muscle aches you will see God. Say hi. You will hear God (or mermaids) say Thank you for removing the plastic. Remember over there mermaids speak Mandarin. Pearls speak any language. Find some. Give some. Enjoy! Joe Cottonwood Joe Cottonwood repairs homes and writes poems in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. His latest books of poetry are Foggy Dog and Random Saints. ** This Tap should be stopped, it’s gapped from reality as we know it; tap that imparts plastic surgery en masse over the earth’s face without its concession for such impersonation. This cunning tap should be stopped for face’ sake, this gaped tap…trap… Ekaterina Dukas Ekaterina Dukas, MA, has studied and taught linguistics and culture at Universities of Sofia, Delhi and London and authored a book on mediaeval art for The British Library. She writes poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning and has been honoured frequently by The Ekphrastic Review and its Challenges. Her poetry collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europa Edizioni, 2021. ** The Emperor's New Clothes Sea, trees, sky, pale, neglected Landscape, dull, so predictable Sea and land touch at the horizon At a distant point, a point zero, Certainly and aptly the 'vanishing point'. Even the sky's dominance is threatened As clouds drift, anxious, uncertain Man, tapping the world's resources Stands tall, metallic, though faintly ridiculous Wearing the livery of his dominance Paper flummery, a cardboard crown Gorgeous, eye catching, empty trash All his devotees grovel in the sand Only the homeless are free to whisper 'This King is rubbish!' Sarah Das Gupta Cambridge Sarah Das Gupta is a retired teacher from Cambridge, UK. She worries that this is an image of what we will leave to our children and grandchildren. ** The 3 Rs When I was a kid we learned the 3 Rs Reading Writing & Arithmetic Kids today also learn 3 Rs Reduce Reuse Refuse (on a good day in a good place) When living in Kenya 50 years ago Kibera slum was not a thing plastics was not a thing pollution was not a thing Snorkelling off Mombasa was a glorious thing akin to swimming in a tropical fish bowl today it's akin to dumpster diving the UN tells us that in 25 years there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish that only 9% of plastic gets recycled WWF tells us we consume a credit card's worth of plastic every week COP delegates tell us to break our addiction to fossil fuels & plastics oil execs tell us that it is our own personal responsibility to do what? obfuscate? what I have yet to learn is how what when to tell my grandchildren Donna-Lee Smith Donna-Lee Smith thanks TER for sharing Von Wong's Turn Off the Plastic Tap. A timely choice for New Year's resolutions concerning the environment & our use of plastics in the kitchen: 1. buy less 2. cook from scratch 3. eschew packaged / processed food / plastic cutlery 4. choose wood cutting boards, bowls, etc. 5. choose glass over plastic containers 6. use reusable bags (a single-use plastic bag can take 1,000 years to decompose. We are absolutely delighted and honoured to have the wonderful Alarie Tennille as a guest judge this time. She chose the artwork and she will choose the poems and stories that go up one week following the deadline. Alarie has been incredibly important to The Ekphrastic Review and we want to take this opportunity to thank her for invaluable support, service, insight, and guidance. From the very beginning she has been involved wherever possible, as a writer, a constant and careful reader, a guest editor, a Throwback Thursday curator, and as a prize nomination consultant. She has helped grow this journal and community, and ekphrasis as well. Her most recent book is a collection of ekphrastic poems, Three A.M. at the Museum, and I was honoured to write the preface for her. The book was named Director’s Pick at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. Get your copy here. Alarie invites you to check out (even better subscribe) to her new blog at https://www.alariepoet.com/ Thank you, Alarie!!! Lorette ** A Message from Guest Judge, Alarie Tennille Hello to all my fellow writers and lovers of ekphrasis. I hope you’ll find Queen Bee, created by up-and-coming young illustrator Noah Jayne Andrews, as irresistible as I do. When I first saw it, I began wondering what I’d write in response to this hauntingly gorgeous monarch. Surely every eye in the room would be on her, but it’s been a while since I’ve offered you a new challenge. I’m curious to see the many variations that you all come up with. You amaze me every time. Noah Jayne, as she signs her art, is a graduate of Savannah College of Art and Design. When I read her mission statement on her website, noahjayneart.com, I knew she would be a terrific addition to The Ekphrastic Review: “ My name is Noah and I have a passion for visual storytelling… I am very devoted when it comes to creating narratives and want to be a part of bringing stories to life for others.” I talked to Noah to get permission to use her illustration and showed her samples of our challenges. She is very excited to join our ekphrastic family. Have fun! ** Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. The prompt this time is Queen Bee, by Noah Jayne Andrews. Deadline is January 19, 2024. You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. The Rules 1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination. 2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way. 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY. Send your work to ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry. 5.Include NOAH JAYNE CHALLENGE in the subject line. 6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight EST, January 19, 2024. 9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is. 10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 15. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages! 16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly. Editor's Note: Apologies. This was supposed to post automatically on Dec. 29 and it did not. Posting it manually today (Dec. 31). So sorry! Thanks everyone! ** on the painting The Adoration of the Magi by Joseph van Bredael joseph you painted a story of near far far off the secret gospel code of who was in and who was out like all parables we’re there: some moving on yet huddled for safety in their travel some with bodies also huddled close around the canopy of a house falling into a stable of shambles pressed together like wheat bending under wind and then there are some among the crowd men from the East the distant ancient enemy who carried off His history’s people now have returned with its own treasures presenting to this child the priceless omens of His distant costly gift Sister Lou Ella Hickman Sister Lou Ella has a master’s in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, US Catholic, Commonweal, The Christian Century, Presence, Prism, and several anthologies. She was a Pushcart nominee in 2017 and 2020. Five poems from her book, she: robed and words, set to music by James Lee III were performed on May 11, 2021. The soloist was the opera singer Susanna Phillips, principal clarinetist Anthony McGill of the New York Philharmonic and Grammy® nominated pianist Mayra Huang. The arrangement was part of a concert held at Y92 in New York City. The group of songs is entitled “Chavah’s Daughters Speak.” Another concert was held in Cleveland, Ohio on March 28, 2023. The soloist was Elena Perroni. ** The Mission Tree Christmas is standing alone as a far off encounter Then the day comes where perfection must be found An ornament, a testament to all that is natural- Casting drudgery aside to climb the mountain in hope Father, son, daughter, mother, brother, sister all along Shielded from boredom on a glistening winters day Talk of the mission paramount at the table the night before The plan, the saw, the axe, the readiness- the size discussed Waiting to be felled as a fallen soldier taken to soon Armored with thorns and a resilient sap greenly hiding Among the many there are candidates, which to be found Just But there is one that must be-the one, the chosen one Who will decide the merits of what is rich and what is gold The youngest, the oldest - those in between being undecided It is all too much trouble, please just pick, pick one, pick me What voice is that surrendering to the family - Beauty It is I, for I am the perfect tree; have you seen another fairer’ A child knows do not argue -this is the tree the mission tree MWPiercy Michael W. Piercy: "At the intersection of Art, Poetry and Contradiction, you will find my work, you will find me. Taking on memories and the present moment. Thinking- With an eye that shadows the natural world. Philosophy, Theology and Science are at the core of my writing. I have found that I am a synthesizer- managing ideas which do not always cohere. Trying to manipulate- Ideas." ** Innkeeper Something happened in the dark that suddenly was not dark but full of burning light…and song-- crazed fools singing in the midst of Roman occupation--and in the dead of winter when there’s little enough to celebrate. Bethlehem heaves with footsore pilgrims. Each bed & board is full this week. Even my shed out back was booked by a weary carpenter & his wife. Humbly they were glad to share with donkeys, cattle, camels there. Today I wake to bedlam in my small estate! The pasture’s crammed with wayfarers—more than I can count. Has all the world gone mad? From the tavern’s balcony I see travellers never known before to mingle. What mystery is here? Sure, something happened overnight. Shepherds I see—though not their flocks; tradesmen with their wares—and do my eyes betray me?—regal folk with glorious clothes… treasures in the straw. Must I join this tumult of gathered folk? Yes, now I shall run fast! Something happened in the dark. They’ve torn away the stable walls to let the people see. The child new-born sits open-eyed upon his mother’s knee; chuckling with delight, he raises happy hands: sages, kings & beggars fall to the ground to honour the child. I gaze on him, and he on me. Never have I witnessed such a wonder. Who cares for censuses, or for Roman laws when God has come to stay with us? Yes, something happened in the night! Lizzie Ballagher Ballagher has travelled widely and lived for years in different countries: a kind of life that has greatly affected her writing. This year wintering in Pennsylvania, she is for the first time in many decades contemplating the beauty of the North American wilderness in winter. Her work also appears intermittently at https://lizzieballagherpoetry.wordpress.com/ ** Adoration of the Magi Holiday Express -- No room at the Inn. Hyatt -- Try down the road. Red Roof -- Sorry. Courtyard -- Nothing. Radisson -- All booked. Travelodge -- No vacancy. Marriott -- Full up. Hampton -- You should’ve called ahead. Ramada -- Shriners in town. Motel 6 -- You're in luck. David Jibson David Jibson (past contributor) lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He is the managing editor of 3rd Wednesday, an independent quarterly journal of literary and visual arts, a board member of the Poetry Society of Michigan and an events coordinator for The Crazy Wisdom Poetry Circle. He is retired from a long career in Social Work, most recently with a Hospice agency. His poetry has been published in dozens of journals in print and online. ** The (Timeless) Adoration of the Magi, by Van Bredael Long before peasants or kings gave a darn,And long before Ann Landers; Jesus was born in a ramshackle barn In 18th-century Flanders. Magi and peasants, St. Mary and Joe Wear clothes in the old fashion, Down in the corner, crown-bearer in tow, A Prince bends knee with passion. He wears a cape and a Renaissance sword, A clear anachronism. So is the skyline that he’s looking toward, A time-travel collision. Jesus seems neither to notice nor care; He stretches out his fingers. Then, for us now, with us here, with them there, His Incarnation lingers. James A. Tweedie James A. Tweedie is a formal poet living in Long Beach, Washington, with four books of poetry published by Dunecrest Press. He is the winner of the 2021 Society of Classical Poets International Poetry Competition, a Laureate's Choice in the 2021 Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest, a First Prize winner in the 2022 100 Days of Dante Poetry Competition, and recipient of the quarterly prize for Best Poem by the Lyric. ** Fresh From Above The heavens are opening and delivering light In the form of flesh, fresh from above To those in ramshackled shelters or gilded glory. News is breaking like the day, Washing away shadows and forms, And defining the face of hope. The cry of a babe takes away the breath Of wanderers, seekers, and finders, A birth, known before conceived, is being recorded. The Word is becoming known by word of mouth, Surety is being captured, captivating us, All the earth is Bethlehem. We are there, all of us, Juxtaposed with those opposed, Being united by one who can’t yet speak. Donna Harlan Donna Harlan has published one collection of poetry titled Bench by the Pond. She is a reader for three literary journals and has had her works featured in several publications. She resides in Jonesborough, Tennessee with her husband where they delight in watching the sun rise and set over the lake every day. ** Denial It's the things on the periphery that don't get noticed. The falcon in the white of the cloud. The dark cloud retreating (we know why). To the left, the town in its grey stone stiffness, no apology to the life in the foreground. The buildings on the right, pushing against each other and the river, going about business denying the distraction, oblivious of what is to come. There are people ignoring the commotion, hawking their wares or walking a horse into the river in anticipation of future baptisms. This is the world, this is the steely cast of life that spreads beyond whatever miracle is hatching in the foreground. So why is the falcon not joining the small birds on the roof of the barn? Amy Jones Sedivy Amy Jones Sedivy grew up in Los Angeles and has lived in many of L.A.’s neighbourhoods. She admits that the best was her childhood home a block from the beach. Amy currently lives in the NELA neighborhood of Highland Park with her artist-husband and their princess-dog. She spends her time reading, writing, and exploring the rest of Los Angeles. Amy’s most recent stories have been published in (mac)ro(mic), Made in L.A. Beyond the Precipice anthology, Big Whoopie Deal, and The Write Launch. ** It's About Knowing Jesus Those two in the middle look like a marriage and the one on his own in a starlit carriage seen cradling a star above his nodding crown looking like an infant in a glowing kaftan gown. Those five lit candles of different shapes & sizes could they have a significant meaning? The three in the foreground share gifts & spices like three wise Kings, come supervening. I mean, there is something here familiar. Thou I've never visited this Bethlehem town there is something here, here like, sand scripture it's about knowing Jesus didn't die and didn't drown. Mark Andrew Heathcote Mark Andrew Heathcote is an adult learning difficulties support worker. He has poems published in journals, magazines, and anthologies online and in print. He resides in the UK and is from Manchester. Mark is the author of In Perpetuity and Back on Earth, two books of poems published by Creative Talents Unleashed. ** In Bethlehem... Oh come! Let us adore him! know not the reason he is born to pave our way Oh come! Let us adore him! questions unasked answered in him today Oh come! Let us adore him! follow his footsteps peasant, scribe humble serf Oh come! Let us adore him! while his life unfolds therein lies our worth Jane Lang Jane Lang’s work has appeared in online publications including Quill and Parchment, the Avocet, Creative Inspirations, The Ekphrastic Review, and published in several anthologies. She has written and given two chap books to family and friends in lieu of Christmas cards. Jane lives in the Pacific Northwest. ** Too Many Walked Into an Inn The painter Joe Van B had stopped to paint the throng he saw that gathered out in back. Confessing that he had a slight constraint-- his funds were sparse since income had been slack. “I’m sorry, there’s no place for you to stay; the manger has a pregnant bride and groom. You see, we’re celebrating Three Kings Day. I’m booked up to the hilt, so there’s no room.” But since the innkeep loved the finer arts he offered him a cot behind the bar and though, at best, he’d sleep in fits and starts, he’d get to paint before his au revoir. The hotelier allowed him one free drink, obliging him, since he lacked wherewithal, to paint his mistress, washing at the sink. Her painting tantalizes from their wall. An old man and a lady wandered in-- “Big Joe and Mary! Say, long time no see. This day, each year, I wonder how you’ve been. Your room’s upstairs, the one out back’s not free.” The night wore on and three more guys arrived, dressed up like magi, tipping on the cheap. They asked the innkeep, could it be contrived for them to feed their camels and to sleep. The barkeep poured—the water changed its hue. Amazed, he said, “Out back, behind the shed, to make accommodations maybe you can turn some hay into a king-sized bed.” That’s how it’s told in Barkeep Twelve, verse Nine, “The Guys Who Turned Their Water Into Wine.” Ken Gosse Ken Gosse prefers to write rhymed, humorous verse using traditional forms. He was first published in First Literary Review–East in November 2016, since then in The Ekphrastic Review, Pure Slush, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Home Planet News, and others. Raised in the Chicago suburbs, now retired, he and his wife have lived in Mesa, AZ, over twenty years, usually with rescue dogs and cats underfoot. ** Saviour Tiny hut of hay. Inside a baby is born, the king, our saviour. Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher has been writing since 2010 and has had many micro-flash fiction stories published. In 2018 her book Shorts for the Short Story Enthusiasts, was published, The Importance of Being Short, in 2019 and In A Flash in 2022. She currently resides on Long Island, New York with her husband Richard and dogs Lucy and Breanna. ** Adoration The inn’s roof, windows and shed are broken but not sad – they knew they were made to come to that state at that exact moment in order to set up the manger to accommodate the birth of the humblest hearts changer. It was a census time, so math ruled the day in many ways, forms and shapes – from his immaculate conception to his birth, converged with the Magi’s promptly calculated trip, crisscrossed with the comet’s precise guiding, paralleled by the shepherds timely welcoming, all enshrined into an inn’s marginal backstage – a world coming of age on history’s blank page. The birds knew it perfect right and, on their part, they flew around to scheme the perspectives of these coinciding lines. The comet, on its side, shined in so bright a contrast over this so grey a place, it was pointless to try escape its spells. The people, themselves, were magnetized by the gracious babe and his serene mum, so their upshot was plump and prime – awe. Today’s draw: how did those bookless farmers know when, how, why, what was happening in the world and were aware of its significance from the start, while we, after ages of wonders and miles of pages, still keep searching for proof crumbs like some pathetic existential glums. Math is not a poet, yet here its exacting vein cuts through each event as a poetic refrain embracing contrasts better than any rhetoric tract and so poignantly against that crumbling old fact ready to clear the space for the newborn’s divine plan to take place. Roman governor’s carpe diem live – by fine metrics and aligned antipodes he’s made alert to an all-changing birth. The bird on the hanging window sees our predicament and ponders in disbelief while balancing the old timber’s wobbling by deftly tuning to the matrix of the universal rhymed throbbing, which at that moment is so openly astonishing that the crowd keeps coming and pouring swerving everyone on the way and trooping around the three Magi whose arrival turns into a festival celebrating the divine in our very own human form for the very first time. Adoration is thy name. In governor’s tongue - ad/to orare/speak, adorare, or – the word, the one in the beginning of all beginnings, tuned to the meaning of all meanings, so, what we are witnessing here is an ever-expanding adoring without which the gist can’t be grasped in the vast and loud speaking space, unless we take our daily bread – the mathematical refrain that keeps us rhymed during our peripatetic soul searching like the bird’s equilibrium on the rostrum’s wobbling. Their landing’s balancing act. Our adoration’s subliminal impact. Ekaterina Dukas Ekaterina Dukas, MA, has studied and taught linguistics and culture at Universities of Sofia, Delhi and London and authored a book on Mediaeval Art for the British Library. She writes poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning. Her poems have been honoured by the The Ekphrastic Review pleasurably often. Her poetry collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europa Edizioni, 2021. ** A Remarkable Day "He's God in human form!" whispers the crowd In motley clothes and groups of twos and threes Beneath the bulky, partly-aqua sky. As nighttime slowly drops, birds meet the breeze And soar towards the heavens, grand and proud. Under the shanty's thatched roof sits a mother. A blue cloak, one white tunic, and a veil Make up her dress. Her eyes endear The Child All humbly, and her soul is chanting, 'Hail!', Aware her Son is not like any other. Three men of kingly rank have gathered here To show their reverence to Him through gold Censers and myrrh while bowing. They are garbed In striking gowns, have horses, and look old. Their true devotion fills the atmosphere. Although The King is born, His home is small, Haunted by cats and pigeons, and straw-made, To show God chose to dwell among the simple And that He's only Son has come to aid Humanity and deliver us all. None knew they were to get abundant grace Yet rushed on hearing "Come and see the Boy!"-- Some children, elderlies, and Roman guards; Though some hearts harbour doubts and some great joy, Each eye's fixed to this Baby's lucent face. Shamik Banerjee Shamik Banerjee is a poet from India. When he is not writing, he can be found strolling the hills surrounding his homestead. His poems have appeared in Fevers of the Mind, Lothlorien Poetry Journal and Westward Quarterly, among others. ** Dear Ekphrastic Challengees, We would like to present you an Ekphrastic challenge with an exciting art piece by Benjamin Von Wong. He is an artist and activist on the quest to make a positive, unforgettable impact…and that seems quite right challenge-wise, right at the end of 2023, while being ushered into 2024! Your prompt for this challenge is Von Wong’s installation called the Giant Plastic Tap, an art piece that spews out the plastics that were collected from the large slums of Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya. It was set up at the United Nations’ Office in Nairobi (10 miles from Kibera!), when meetings were held there to discuss a Global Plastic Treaty. You can look for more information @ https://turnofftheplastictap.com/ ; other work by Von Wong is at hand @ https://www.vonwong.com/ (Please, do take a look at his fascinating portfolio, e.g. his Epic Stormchasing Portraits re Cowspiracy & Climate Change…surreal!). I think Von Wong’s work is just amazing and very inspiring…and I think it will surely enable you to write some fine words to highlight your ideas on the “plastic conversation”. Thank you for submitting your writing, I am looking forward to reading your pieces. Thank you Benjamin for granting us permission, and thank you Lorette for making this ekphrastic challenge happen! Be well, wishing you a healthy and safe 2024 already, Kate Copeland ** Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. The prompt this time is Giant Plastic Tap, by Benjamin Von Wong. Deadline is January 5, 2024. You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. The Rules 1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination. 2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way. 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY. Send your work to ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry. 5.Include VON WONG CHALLENGE in the subject line. 6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight EST, January 5, 2024. 9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is. 10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 15. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages! 16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly. War Then suddenly, from the clouds beyond the street lights and broken city full of maybes and broad cuts in the asphalt, hate plowed into the cul-de-sac of our world. It was after the full moon rose behind the storm clouds and after those clouds turned the night to liquid, when October turned fire-weather--lightning or bombs, it was hard to tell which--burst from sky and left a momentary sketch on the retinas of our surprise. Evolving from an imagined backstory, I see pieces of the war machine sweeping away everything: a circus wheel, a gear, a wing, a broken window, a table tennis game, a book, a stolen poet, a fractured child. And I wonder how much more must break, how much more must we watch fall apart. Julene Waffle Julene Waffle, a graduate of Hartwick College and Binghamton University, is a teacher in rural NYS, an entrepreneur, a nature lover, a wife, a mother of three boys, two dogs, three cats, a bearded dragon, and, of course, she’s a writer. She finds pleasure in juggling these jobs while seeming like she has it all together. Her work has appeared in The Adroit Journal Blog, NCTE’s English Journal, Mslexia, The Bangalore Review, The Ekphrastic Review, among others. Her work also appears in several anthologies, and her chapbook So I Will Remember. Learn more at www.wafflepoetry.com. ** Flying Machines Were those dreams with you behind the counter through all your long years in retail purgatory? Or did they wait like seeds in the desert for the rains to come quickening at last to rise unfurling leaves like wings into the welcome air? Was the freedom you found in that small attic space what saints found in their bare cloisters prophets and philosophers in their barren caves? Freedom to unleash fantastic dreams rising higher than the eagles riding the updrafts like lethal angels full of grace free from earth with all the snags and stops that kept your wings clipped while you bought and sold each day's account one more stone to keep you grounded until you retired finding room enough in a narrow attic to unpack your dreams making endless images of flying machines drawn in ink and watercolour wash with such assurance even the most fanciful painted like a gypsy caravan looks ready to lift off the page and fly Mary McCarthy Mary McCarthy is a retired Registered Nurse who has always been a writer. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic World, edited by Lorette C. Luzajic, The Plague Papers, edited by Robbi Nester, and recent issues of Gyroscope, 3rd Wednesday, Caustic Frolic, Inscribe, and Verse Virtual. Her collection How to Become Invisible is now available from Kelsay books. ** Casting No Shadows like fresh smoke stealing out the long-necked chimney far above the crematory walls, we drift atop the river of shimmer past space and time. We shift with rain that sent the earth wafting up the window by your very own bed. They are watering the plants you had said, then taking it all in your last breath. Splashes leap, spreads below a green solace mobbed by leathery brown peeling bark, almost pleasing. We meet and part like light and cloud swaying in the wind. We are lost to an empty dream. Abha Das Sarma An engineer and management consultant by profession, Abha Das Sarma enjoys writing. Besides having a blog of over 200 poems (http://dassarmafamily.blogspot.com), her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Spillwords, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Sparks of Calliope, Trouvaille Review, Silver Birch Press, Blue Heron Review, here and elsewhere. Having spent her growing up years in small towns of northern India, she currently lives in Bengaluru. ** I Think I Am Flying I think I am flying! My mind...double-sided art. Inhabited by thoughts, ideas, and dreams impossible to fake. Now, I am ending up looking with my closed eyes into my burning heart. An intricate mechanism of singularities. They are always there. When I wake up, when I sleep, when I stay, when I weep. When I feel...Sometimes I feel an immense precipice in myself, my throbbing aorta wanting to leave my still body, to live the life I am living inside, stubbornly, together with the festering riot of my sinews, my veins, and my skin. My wholeness aches in a metaphysical pain beyond myself. Deep innuendoes are crawling into my aching self. The one who wants to evade my life’s circularity, travelling in my space of flying wheels. There is nothing like it. It is my cabinet of curiosities. When it is too much, it is the only place that contains me, being like a mirror to my intimation, where things are smooth. But, until today, I couldn’t find the key. It is the first time in ages that I can enter. The key was there the whole time. In the same spot. Thus, I couldn’t see it because it was me who was not there. My flying wheels—my happy place, a realm of my experimental joy. Oppressive, the barometric pressure, disguised in excitement, invites my normality-shaped loneliness to wait for me. Eventually, I am stepping into the imponderability of the room, into my freedom, caged in a thought. In my room of flying wonders, my eyes become spinning wheels, guilty of making me suspiciously alive, as my ears contribute to the noise of my silence, ill-heard by my mind. Worn, I kiss my morning with hope, and the wheels give me a timeless merriment. I think I am flying! In daring volutes of foreign loops. I am there... flying in my secret departure, unaware of my destination but inconceivably happy. I am playing, swinging, in this whirlpool of flying machines that are carrying out a radious siege of circles, twists, and upside-down dreams. Suddenly, the stern doctor opens the door brutally, with an inexplicable sense of entitlement. I am indulging myself in the pleasure of righteous indignation. Then, falling is my only choice. Falling into the same bed where gravity has been dragging me into a painful reality. The reality… etching deeper into my ultimate verse of pain. Since the accident, the bed has been my pre-elegiac station, where I haven’t got other alternatives but flying with my mind, committing a majestic censorship of my thoughts, parched well, linked to my numb body, which forgot to wander. ‘’How are we today?’’ I cried so many times, with no voice. I screamed, buried in my weeping moan, repeating all over again in my head. I think I am flying! Laura (Grá) Adumitroaie Laura (Grá) Adumitroaie is an Irish-Romanian children’s book author, poetess, Monessori teacher, writer, therapist, blogger, and linguist with a PhD in Semiotics, living in Blessingtom, Co. Wicklow, Ireland. She published a book called Poems of Absolution to honour the presence of her daughter in her life. She is a member of a few writing groups in Dublin and Blessington. She loves art in any form, being very fond of Klimt, Andy Warhol, Tom Waits, and Nick Cave. Laura is currently involved in a few writing projects regarding raising awareness for children’s mental health, as well as creative and therapeutic writing workshops. Her life is dedicated to children, art and dreams. To learn more about her, visit www.ajourneyto.net. ** Thank you Note to Charles Only an outsider artist can design an outsider other the flying machine able to reach the heavens of my dreamscape. Undefeated by failure, undaunted by ridicule and mockery--we lift, soar, and drift, fueled by imagined possibilities, and the silver lining of clouds -- to hover above an imaginary Spring in a Winter's dream. Karen "Fitz" FitzGerald Karen "Fitz" FitzGerald, genre fluid, continues along the path of emerging writer, ever grateful for opportunities to submit her work, and especially to affordable venues. ** I Have Questions Mr. Dellschau, You passed away 100 years ago, your work sat ignored for another 50, discovered by happenstance in a gutter after a fire in your house. I have questions. And I’ve enlisted the assistance of psychic J’air Boudare who has communicated with Da Vinci, Klint, and Bosch, and is herself the daughter of a pilot and flight attendant. For transparency, I’m afraid of flying myself though it’s more claustrophobia than anything; we don’t need to get into that here. J’air has agreed to conduct the interview and suggested I submit questions in advance for your consideration. I have a blog and a podcast called: I Have Questions. But we don’t need to go into what blogs and podcasts are. For all I know you may be familiar with them being the visionary you were, in addition to having been a butcher and early avid cyclist who worked in an attic, ahead of your time, fanciful in your imaginations, meticulous in your water colours, and incredibly original with your collages, which in my view are metaphors for life— pieces of art pasted, patched, and intricately woven together in original ways, like us; maybe the most organic of all expressions. > J’air, are you getting all this? Too much backstory? Am I excessively side-barring? I’m assuming Mr. Dellschau has nothing but time, but who knows. Okay, I’ll paint the picture for our interview. We’re in your attic studio, both of us under 5’ 5”, so we don’t need to duck under a slanted roof, there’s a glass dome and lots of light. Birds fly above, beside, and under us. Your pipe is unlit. On your bench sits a stack of sketchpads, butcher paper, and tea with strudel that stepdaughter Elizabeth brought on a tray. Well sir, I’m drawn to your art and drawn by your story. It must’ve surprised you when your work appeared in shows with DaVinci, exhibited in New York and abroad. Critics call you an original visionary artist. But I’d like to start at the beginning, or at least early on, a broad cut view of who you were, starting with your life as a butcher. I have questions. 1). How did you get your start as a butcher and what was your favourite tool? One knife in particular? Favourite cut of meat? And this may sound strange, but I wonder since you used a lot of red in your work, and Hemingway had an artist friend named John Fulton who rose though the bullfighting ranks in Spain, rare for a non-Spaniard, and who used blood from bulls he killed in his paintings, did you ever use blood from butchered meat in your own watercolours? > J’air. Is that too weird to ask?? Too creepy? Okay maybe so. Let me ask you this— when times were slow behind the counter did you ever paint on butcher paper and dream that someday you’d devote yourself to flying machines? 2). You belonged to a secret club of aeronauts in the Sonora desert. One member invented an anti-gravity gas for lift off and propulsion. Yet research was never able to confirm the existence of the Sonora Aero Club or any of its members. Did it exist? Why the secrecy? There were theories of possible alien encounters. Care to comment? 3). I understand you were a draftsman and not a pilot or builder. Did your own long and difficult overland and over-sea travels inspire your flying machine designs? 4). In your lifetime you never showed your work to anyone. Why did you keep your beautiful art secret? Does it bother you that you’ve became famous, your work widely seen in traveling exhibits, that you’ve inspired artists and writers alike to be visionary? That they’ve attached that name to your work and placed you in a genre, posted your art on Youtube and that today, right now in fact your work is being pondered, admired, written, and talked about? And if so, will you forgive me? > J’air I’m getting into the weeds here. Too many questions? Too much off topic and personal? Some label Dellschau’s art, stories, and journals pure fantasy. But does that even matter, or in any way limit the truth of his visions? That label just seems so beside the point. Okay. Let’s keep going. 5). You ended up in Texas, maybe California, too. Did you ever miss Prussia? Perhaps dream of flying back to where you were born, landing in a pasture, and giving others a thrill that exceeded their wildest dreams? 6). Did your Flying Machine exceed your own wildest dreams? Was it in fact a dream? A continuous one? Do you despise me for asking? 7). A late bloomer at 69, do you have any advice to others who wish to pursue their art after putting it off for most of their lives? 8). Your name was misspelled on your headstone. They also left off one of your two middle initials. So disrespectful. Would you like me to correct that? I could start a Go Fund me drive. Create an App. > J’air, would he know what an App is? I just don’t know if he is in some sort of all-knowing place or what, you know. I’m in the dark here. Obviously. Okay. 9). Finally, Mr. Dellschau I love your art, admire how you didn’t feel the need to show it, monetize it, or create a brand. So pure. You even used codes in your work. Would you prefer that I keep this interview in my sketchpad? (I use them, too, though I noticed you used grids. I prefer unlined myself!). If this is your preference, please tell J’air, or show me a sign. I respect your privacy, even 100 years later. Especially so. Yes, I have questions. I also understand some mysteries are best left intact. > J’air, did you get all that? Hey J’air, are you still with me here? Guy Biederman Guy Biederman is a card-carrying genius with a fake ID. He’s a short story midwife, pareidolia doula, and a Tuxedo cat valet who writes between naps, lives on a houseboat, and walks the planks daily. It’s all true, especially the fiction. Except for the part about not liking to fly. ** NB Super Star But what of fiction, what of fact, incredible men, Wright or not, Da Vinci codes that whirl about, and Swift Laputa, flying high, for Texas, San Antonio? From magic carpets to balloons, dirigibles, for him in draught, flights of fancy, Sonora Club, his Aero bubbles, Gas NB, noted fuel, gravity free. In ornamental borders style, those watercolours, likened jewels, imagination in full flight - these circus banners, advert clowns, domain of Fool who wears the crown. Though Dellschau - name means Super Star - his works were serendipity, their preservation also chance. A grave mistake, his spell ignored, but mood flew on, think Pythonesque. Stephen Kingsnorth Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com ** 1911 and Then Some… Before he became ‘my father’ he was an astronaut. No, not to the moon, just into the sky on dodgy wings. He tested the new contraptions. Most test pilots died. He told me that he ‘listened to the engine’… and knew. They had this communion. Later he became an engineer. But before he could settle on solid earth, he took this brand-new toy to join a far-away war and promptly crashed into a Bulgarian spinach field; the local black smith and the local apothecary got him back on his… no, not feet, allowed him to continue his way to Turkey. Through the Balkans, not above and over. There were upwinds and downwinds bouncing his flimsy flying machine between the unforgiving mountains. Looked like Snoopy as pilot. God only knows who took the photo. Showing off, he crashed into a river near Istanbul. At the time it was still known as Constantinople. He and his passenger, a Turkish officer, spent the rest of their war in a hospital overlooking the Bosphorus-- eyes travelling all the way to Asia. He didn’t want to fight, just fly. Didn’t do either. Rose Mary Boehm Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as seven poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was three times nominated for a Pushcart and once for Best of Net. Her latest: Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders? (Kelsay Books July 2022), Whistling in the Dark (Cyberwit July 2022), and Saudade (December 2022) are available on Amazon. A new collection, Life Stuff, has been published by Kelsay Books. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/ ** Wonder Yes, it will also be comfortable. The two of us standing, talking as the slow wheels turn in a multitude of colours, like the intricate workings of the brain, a most extraordinary invention. I can see quite clearly the beauty of the universe. It’s jewelled borders, it’s names and numbers, and how we can float above it yet also fit within it exactly, It is rather like a dream or a fancy but exciting. Would you like to join me? Louise Warren Louise Warren’s first collection A Child’s Last Picture of the Zoo won the Cinnamon Press debut poetry competition and was published in 2012. A pamphlet In the scullery with John Keats also published by Cinnamon came out in 2016. Her poems have been widely published in magazines including Ambit, The Butchers Dog, Stand, Poetry Wales and Rialto. In 2018 she won first prize in the Prole Laureate Poetry Competition with her poem The Marshes which appears in the pamphlet John Dust illustrated by the artist John Duffin and published in 2019 by V.Press. Her latest poetry pamphlet is Sometime, in a Churchyard, a collaboration with the artist Charlotte Harker published in 2023 by Paekakariki Press. ** Flying Machines That Also Teach Greek Step right up! Step right up to the incredible Ekphrastic Express! Where to, sir or madam? (idioekphrasis) Standard features of our Vogel 457 Series include patented anti-gravity technology, separate cabins for first and economy class, semi-private viewing windows, and a central dining and dancing area for your aviation pleasure. (panekphrasis) Complimentary in-flight phonographs play favorites from Blues, Broadway and Jazz. (phonoekphrasis) We’ve got experiences for every budget—anybody can travel from any place with new VR/AR Escapes. (neoekphrasis) Fancy a seat on our Time Travel Line, with routes direct to King Tut? (metaekphrasis) Let me call your attention to the Broad Cutt’s fully rotating propeller, offering luxurious maneuverability. (oligoekphrasis) This balanced four-cylinder design ensures every voyage is supersonicserene. (morphekphrasis) All Aeros fleet models were designed by visionary draftsman Charles A.A. Dellschau. (proekphrasis) Consider a visit to Alamo City heritage centres, which house his earliest works. (topoekphrasis) Judi Mae “JM” Huck Judi Mae “JM” Huck is an arts administrator currently based in Las Vegas, Nevada. She is the Clark County Poet Laureate coordinator and a teaching artist for both literary and visual arts. Follow her on Instagram @bandittrl. ** It Seems Like Only Yesterday a pantoum It seems like only yesterday . . . The first time I flew in a plane. High over San Francisco Bay; It seemed I’d entered God’s domain. The first time I flew in a plane I soared into bright heaven’s skies. I felt I’d entered God’s domain, To see the world through angels’ eyes. I soared into bright heaven’s skies, The world below looked, oh-so small. To see the world through angel’s eyes From where I soared above it all. The world below looked, oh-so small-- And even the suburban sprawl From where I soared above it all Was beautiful, as I recall. And even the suburban sprawl High over San Francisco Bay Was beautiful, as I recall. It seems like only yesterday . . . James A. Tweedie James A. Tweedie has lived in California, Utah, Scotland, Australia, Hawaii, and presently in Long Beach, Washington. He has published six novels, four collections of poetry, and one collection of short stories with Dunecrest Press. His award-winning poetry has appeared both nationally and internationally in both online and print media. Among his awards for poetry are First Place honours in the Society of Classical Poets 2021 International Poetry Competition; Quarterly Prize Best Poem from The Lyric; First Place in the 2022 100 Days of Dante Poetry Competition; and the Laureate Choice Award in the 2021 Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest. ** she was given many names Waste of space. Never be worth a damn. Daydreamer, mind-wanderer, head full of fluff. Hearer of ugly words that floated past. Never-let-them-sticker. Receiver of whallops that landed across the back of the neck, kicks on the behind. Bone-song singer, cut mender, jaw clencher, skull healer. Lifting-chin-out-of-the-dirt expert. Girl getting on with it. Nose stuck in a book. Imagineer. Scryer, diviner. Second-sight seer, third-eye wrangler, fourth-generation witch. Never focussed on the here-and-now. Needlesmith. Stitch saver. Fabric salvager. Green magic user. Branch bender. Willow weaver. Tent pitcher of a space-bound teepee. Binder of the incantations of control. Wielder of the hazel bough. Maker of cunning devices. Hidden message revealer. Shaper of ends. Whisperer of words of power. Flame trainer. Keen-eyed watcher of the birds, gleaner of the secrets of thermal hover, the lifting thrust of a wing. Balloon inflator. Gravity tamer. Close companion of the moon, a confidant privy to its moods and passions, its orbital vagaries, its beautiful sulks and pouts, its winsome tidal tiffs. Shaman of rockets, blesser of intricate mechanisms. Cloud mapper. Craft steerer, obstacle navigator. Celestial pilot. Conjurer of alchemical energy. Miracle worker. Escape artist. Freedom taster. Emily Tee Emily Tee writes poetry and flash fiction. She's had pieces published in The Ekphrastic Review challenges, Visual Verse, Blue Heron Review, Scavengers Lit and elsewhere online, and in print with Poetry Scotland and Sunday Mornings at the River's Poetry Diary 2024. She lives in the UK. ** A Well Grounded Gentleman The ginger dessert undulates below like the orange zest on last night’s Old Fashioneds. My head swims from too much bourbon and the machine’s buzzing reverberates painfully. The engine rumbles and roars and we continue to ascend. When Marie and I were first courting, we enjoyed a hot-air balloon ride and the delight of feeling weightless in the wind, but rocket ships are not my thing. As my ears pop, I contemplate why I ever acquiesced to this flight. I stand encased in metal—rivets and bolts sealing out the natural air and thick glass windows reminding me of my aerial captivity. Charles should never have insisted we drink so much, if he intended to fly this high. Now I wonder whether I can endure the whole journey without evacuating last night’s indulgences. Charles thinks he’s sharing a privilege. That I, his former business partner, should consider myself fortunate to be joining one of his maiden voyages. And yet, I can’t help considering the cost. He’s spent the better part of a decade on this project and sacrificed dozens of relationships in service of this machine. Maybe I’m too simple a man, but I see no need to fly higher than the clouds. What more is there to see? Give me terra firma every day. Give me horses and cars that streak across the land, and fine-boned beauties who lay across the grass. True splendor is in surface contact, not in levitation. We used to build buildings. Now Charles insists upon escaping our foundations. But what if these bolts don’t hold? What if we simply explode as the pressure overwhelms? Maybe that’s his plan. Maybe he has no desire to return to Earth. I suspect he’s never gotten over my rejection. My lack of interest in any partnership beyond business. Still, I have done nothing to make him feel small. If anything, I’ve gone out of my way to pretend he never crossed a line. Why else would I be here? And yet, I must return. I must insist he bring me back down. To my beloved Marie and to my girls. To my horses and to my gardens. To my Eden, that awaits below. I’m sorry he doesn’t have love on the ground, but he’s no more likely to find it in the sky. And every man who has ever flown ends up buried in the soil. Coleman Bigelow Coleman Bigelow is a Pushcart Prize and Best MicroFiction nominated author whose work has appeared recently in Bending Genres, Emerge Journal, Hyacinth Review and The Dribble Drabble Review. His first chapbook In Rare Cases and Other Unfortunate Circumstances was published in May. Find more at: www.colemanbigelow.com or follow him on Twitter: @ColemanBigelow and Instagram: @cbigswrites. ** Flying Machines For early aviators of the sky, Log-cabin-like designs are comic, as You cannot fly a circus wagon high: Its comfort tantalizes, but it has No force to lift it up and make the earth Grow distant. They would say the pictures are Miraculous as art, but have no worth As blueprints for a means to travel far ... Charles Dellschau would dissent. He would have said His quaint designs weren't meant for flights that go In space, but flights of fancy, which can head North, east, south, west, straight up or down below Earth's oceans—they can take you anywhere, So long as you imagine it is there! Mike Mesterton-Gibbons Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His acrostic sonnets have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Daily Mail, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, MONO., the New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, the Satirist, the Washington Post and WestWard Quarterly. Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. The prompt this time is The Adoration of the Magi, by Joseph van Bredael. Deadline is December 22, 2023. You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. The Rules 1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination. 2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way. 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.
Send your work to ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry. 5.Include VAN BREDAEL CHALLENGE in the subject line. 6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight EST, December 22, 2023. 9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is. 10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 15. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages! 16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly. Dear Writers, Thanks for all the fascinating submissions to the Bongé Challenge. These biweekly offerings are actually challenges on two fronts: first for the writers, second for the judges. Choosing from so many intriguing takes on this abstract piece was its own swirling whirlpool of words and images and reflections. I hope you enjoy reading these selections, and that, like me, you will appreciate the perspective that each writer brings to this work of art. With best wishes for your continued creativity, Sandi Stromberg ** Dusti Bongé Exhibit, Hollis Taggart Gallery, 2022 Bring Dusti back to New York, sunflowers in one hand, Biloxi oysters in the other. Yellow. Orange. Green. Blue. In the Ab Ex Boys Club of Gorky, De Kooning, Gottlieb, and Pollock, a woman wielded her own brush and palette knife, stretched her own canvas on beams of Southern pine. Scents of turpentine and linseed oil seeped into the waves of her long blonde hair. It was the 1950s. Paint exploded. Betty Parsons picked her up, begged her to stay. Canvas gessoed, scratched in purple, blooming red, floating angles, falling water. Back in Harrison County, rumors flew, all the details—real and imagined—whispered loudly at Christ Church the Redeemer Ladies Club Weekly Potluck Supper. The men of Biloxi watched her slim arms plant red lilies across a driveway, graft camellias, hide narcissus bulbs deep in the Mississippi soil. She stirred fiery pots of gumbo, lifted cast iron skillets of cornbread, wore white on the hottest days of August, sipped her Chardonnay with ice crystals. Today, back in Chelsea, a solo show. Opening night, a sea of pearls, silver trays, the flutes of Veuve Clicquot, deconstructed sushi, Sanskrit tattoos, and violet lipstick. Suede jackets, Armani pumps, triple-pierced ears, all the black-stockinged legs stand in awe. Manhattan bows. The artist smiles. From a grave in the South, she is still holding her own. Gabrielle Langley Gabrielle Langley is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Fairy Tale (Sable Books, 2023) and Azaleas on Fire (Sable Books, 2019). With work appearing in a variety of literary journals, she has been awarded the Lorene Pouncey Poetry Award and the Vivian Nellis Memorial Award for Creative Writing. She has been Houston Poetry Fest's Featured Poet, a national ARTlines finalist, and a recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations. Ms. Langley was also a spearhead and co-editor for the anthology Red Sky: Poetry on the global epidemic of violence against women (Sable Books, 2016). Additional information about this poet is available at http://www.gabriellelangley.com. ** Whirlpool America’s top diplomat says “far too many Palestinians have been killed.” 11/10/23 NYT In a cold and relentless prairie wind, here in November west of Chicago, the trees have lost track of their leaves, swirling down in ocher, red, and gold. But what’s it like to be a tree, losing its children, rooting deeply and dark, praying to withstand even further loss? Laurence Musgrove Laurence Musgrove is a professor of English at Angelo State University in Central West Texas where he teaches composition, literature, and creative writing from a Buddhist perspective. He is the author of, three volumes of poetry: Local Bird (2015), The Bluebonnet Sutras (2019), and A Stranger’s Heart (2023) all from Lamar University Literary Press. ** A Little Man A little man, a vaguely yellowed apparition holding up the whole evolving universe of everything entangled in the garden, summer roses, fallen autumn leaves scattered, lonely, spindly trees stretching, longing, reaching up beyond the darkly narrowed confines clearly to the sun, a simple bird arched studiously aside, entangled in the fabulous invention of a little man, curiously portraying, purposely displaying the complicated contours of his own creation. Enrico Cumbo Enrico Cumbo was born in Sicily in the last century and emigrated to Canada when 9 years old. He is an historian (Ph.D, University of Toronto, 1996) and has just retired from teaching in the International Baccalaureate (IB) program at a school in Toronto. He now has a great deal of time on his hands which he uses for ongoing research (in ethnic studies and historiography), rediscovering family, writing poetry, and generally contemplating the state of the world in this century, an increasing ordeal. ** There is Light A prodigy at eleven years of age, she wondered where all this would lead. She focused on experimenting with a stub of black eyeliner from her mother’s bathroom, deviously hid it inside a shiny red pencil box which sat on the top of an old cedar hewn dresser, within plain view. She horded hours, traced the maze of black stairs swirling ever upward, reaching for the plexiglass window at the very edge of the slanted attic roof where she yearned and struggled to set aside pre-teen angst and fly into the music like Poe’s black raven, feel the sheer joy of release from a dark, dank, blackened hole as it worried within her mind. A violin, her violin, handed down from virtuoso to virtuoso, inside a scarred, dilapidated case that touched, traveled to Bergen-Belsen and came out intact, had heard it all: the continual dirge of lost freedom, lost hope, despair as the bow cried for new life, new beginnings and somehow reunited with her family, her hands, her growing understanding of the pull, the call held within those two white nooses of trailing tomorrows. Jane Lang Jane Lang’s work has appeared in online publications including Quill and Parchment, the Avocet, Creative Inspirations, The Ekphrastic Review, and published in several anthologies. She has written and given two chap books to family and friends in lieu of Christmas cards. Jane lives in the Pacific Northwest. ** Charybdis I believed suffering real, if God existed or no god existed, this did, even if untouched by it, passing through other patient faces or the frozen grimace on some. Nothing had hurt me, nothing, not even nothing itself could harm. * Why do we look for pain in eyes, photos of eyes, open in death, weeping, or blank reflectors of sky passing, unburdened of any meanings? Why not use the lanky body, naked, as the news repeated, naked, moved face down on the cold floor. After the harm was done, nothing helped, nothing recycled the breath, not even the protocol of massage, rough on the dying skin, or to open those eyes where our eyes see only nothing, except ourselves staring back. * All night digits of twigs and rigid branches scratched the old wood of the window frames. The web they made contained nests of shadows where a few leaves left through the winter filled places where other leaf-shapes failed this year to come. Do trees feel like veterans who wake with nightly pain in phantom limbs, flexing a tight glove of hurting around a hand permanently gone, or a leg's weight pressing nothing where a foot once stepped, or once danced or stamped the earth? * I had alone escaped the seven blazes, the ancient curses we inherit. The file of razor teeth, the roar of blood on a predator's jaw -- these had never even nicked my skin. The lion was caught in a net lying among lambs, at peace, with their soft-leather tongues licking milk like its cubs. And the dark stone of cursing, falling on me, tumbling me down to hell where the seven judges silently wait, rose, instead, like a buoyant meteor. The black waters -- flooding the land, filling lungs -- that flung lifeless forms in whirlpools to the bottom retreated when they barely touched me. Nothing could ever hurt what is nothing. * And then there was you your damp hand on my neck as you kissed the top of my head "You are all right," you said "Everything will be alright," you repeated to me, over and over, in those few soul-murdering words. Royal Rhodes Royal Rhodes, poet and retired educator, studied and taught classical Greek and Roman texts for many years. He resides now in rural Ohio. ** Awakening Swirling dark chaos, enclosing in our minds, awakening truth. Clasping A darkening sight, swirling in states of abyss, clasping sanity. Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher has been writing since 2010 and has had many micro-flash fiction stories published. In 2018 her book Shorts for the Short Story Enthusiasts, was published, The Importance of Being Short, in 2019 and In A Flash in 2022. She currently resides on Long Island, New York with her husband Richard and dogs Lucy and Breanna. ** To Dusti Bongé Regarding Whirlpool Where freedom and constraint collide my eye is drawn to depth inside the static swirl of gifted mind awash in wonder where I find that things perhaps still yearn to be what would have been where now I see that suction of impulsive brush has blurred creative plunging rush to sink tradition into trend where means themselves become the end though books — I swear — and manuscripts still waken wisdom, moving lips to signal, as they drift apart, preoccupation proving art. Portly Bard Prefers to craft with sole intent... of verse becoming complement... ...and by such homage being lent... ideally also compliment. Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise for words but from returning gaze far more aware of fortune art becomes to eyes that fathom heart. ** Vortex There I was: resting but not enjoying it, as rest first requires work. Brown soggy, leafy weeds, fragile bleached reed tips hinted connection to submerged, drowned, obscured earth. My foot on the wet rock slipped, elbow off knee, chin off hand, body off smooth, tilted boulder. I made little splash for all my dread, sucked into murkiness in silence. Optimistic feet stretched down to greet the bottom; body followed in submission, anticipated the upward spring. The bottom wasn’t there. Hands and feet flailed in uncoordinated panic. Gravity was bested by centripetal force, current I’d overlooked from my listless perch. A gang of smarmy stalks, rangy and spastic, surrounded me; the more I fought, the more they wrapped slimy tendrils around limbs and trunk. I thrashed: a fish on a hook, twisted in twining weeds until I did not know up from down. I opened underwater eyes, glimpsed dim light. I retracted my extremities, wrapped arms around knees, tucked head. Vines lost their purchase. The torrent ejected me for being unwilling to spar. I bobbed to the surface, buoyant and still. Sheila Murphy Sheila Murphy writes poems to slow down. She is a spiritual director, cancer survivor, retreat leader and adventurer. She is a music director and pub fiddler. She has published poems in Presence: An International Journal of Spiritual Direction and The Ekphrastic Review. Sheila lives in coastal Maine, is married and has two adult offspring. She plays fiddle, guitar and piano. ** In The Beginning It was not only the swirling whirling of wind and water that began it all. Not only the sharp grey slabs thrown up and dashed around or rocks coated brown with mud. and slime No, beneath all of that was fire the burning heart that flamed towards the surface ready for that day when everything would be burned. Lynn White Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Consequence Magazine, Firewords, Vagabond Press, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes Journal. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com///www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/ ** Lucky Escape What started as a stiff breeze whipped up all of a sudden. We were walking under the canopy of the autumn trees, green, brown, red, orange leaves flying about us, eddies swirling, tumble twirling in a maelstrom, like a whirlpool, season's icy breath a cool reminder of unease as stormy rain began its spritzing. Shrugging farther into coats we hunkered, the path now rising with tree thickets bunkering as we neared the railway bridge, our footfalls on the natural ridge beside the valley with tracks below. Then we heard the rapid steps approaching, almost tip-tapping, clopping. It made us glance around, nearly stopping, expecting to find a stray dog, a hound of large size coming round that bend within the bridge's walls. To our surprise and also shock it wasn't a canine shape but a large buck, head low otherwise we'd have clocked the rack of antlers. Our eyes locked. The beast had a feverish look, the alarm within them not to be mistook, and it turned, leapt and then was gone. We checked the bridge - empty, none crossing there, but by the corner a gap large enough for a deer? Perhaps. We chose to turn around the way we'd come. Seconds later a large oak tree fell blocking the bridge where we'd have been walking. The leaves flew still and the storm raged on so we fought the storm's whirlpool lashes to get home. And in the calm and warm and dry we asked where the deer had come from and why. We asked ourselves did we believe it - was the magnificent creature really there? Did we really see it? And in the stillness away from the storm, we wondered if it was the forest's spirit charging us down? Was it just there to chase us off, to warn, raise the alarm? Whatever the creature was, real or make-believe, we were very grateful for our reprieve. Emily Tee Emily Tee writes poetry and flash fiction. She's had recent pieces published in Visual Verse, Blue Heron Review and elsewhere online, and in print in Poetry Scotland and Sunday Mornings at the River's Poetry Diary 2024 anthology. She lives in the UK. ** A Song of Survival Entwined–the vermilion bud, the flower, petalled cream- blossom through hurricanes, chanting their anthem ‘Matter, We Matter.’ Two’s not just a number. Two’s all they need. Two’s a team. Entwined–the vermilion bud, the flower, petalled cream- whirlpool the icy winds. Pungent the thorns. ‘Touch winter’s beam,’ challenge the tangerine storms. The petals shoot, spark, spring, scatter their scent across squalls’ chatter. Entwined–the vermilion bud, the flower, petalled cream- blossom through hurricanes, chanting their anthem ‘Matter, We Matter.’ Preeth Ganapathy Preeth Ganapathy is a software engineer turned civil servant from Bengaluru, India. Her recent works have been published in several magazines such as Star 82 Review, Panoply Zine, Visual Verse, Quill & Parchment, Shotglass journal, Sparks of Calliope, Tiger Moth Review, The Sunlight Press, Ink, sweat & Tears and various other journals. Her microchaps A Single Moment and Purple have been published by Origami Poems Project. ** Becoming Acquainted with Dusti As Thanksgiving approaches on the American side of the boundary and my country has become a whirlpool of dark foreboding, slashes of hatred, violence, vengeance and lies, with fire reds and oranges burning in the background, I become acquainted with the artist Dusti Bonge born in deep Mississippi at a time when dark foreboding whirlpools of hate and lies was like daily bread, common and ordinary, perhaps her painting 'Whirlpool' uses slashes of dark trees and twisting shapes pulling the viewer toward burning reds and oranges, as a warning, a way of saying "no", I can't write of her motives only that becoming acquainted with an unfamiliar artist such as Dusti and viewing her remarkable body of work as the seasons change to an unknown new year somehow makes life a little easier to accept and a grace of thanks is a little easier to recite. Daniel Brown Daniel Brown has recently published at age 72 his first collection Family Portraits in Verse and Other Illustrated Poems through Epigraph Books, Rhinebeck, NY. He has most recently been published in Jerry Jazz Musicianand Chronogram Magazine and was included in Arts Mid-Hudson 2023 gallery presentation Poets Respond to Art in Poughkeepsie, NY. ** Outlier In Whirlpool, by Dusti (Eunice) Bongé, the white’s so bright it shimmers on the edges like sunlight, and winds its way out of the black like water. The two big patches of colour eclipse the dull background They float atop stands, or stems like a showy pair of flowers in a wrought-iron enclosure. Clearly the white and red are too much, and need to be held in by those curved black bars. Welcome to the 1950s, heyday of abstraction! While some artists stuck to two dimensions and others smeared thick paint across the canvas Dusti valued depth and composition. Whirlpool is composed, planned, red and red, black and black, white and white balanced around a central point. Such a dance between freedom and restraint! Above the white paint pooled at the bottom the black forms a shape like ancient writing. Depth, control, gold triangles, black bars The red and white burn on, but nothing escapes the cage except the meandering line of light, or water, the bright white blob, like a tiny fish, and on the bottom right a little gold explosion. Karen Kebarle Karen Kebarle was born in Edmonton, Alberta, and now lives in Ottawa, Ontario. She holds an MA and PhD in English and has taught literature, writing, and English as a second language. One of her favourite jobs was her two years working as an art interpreter at the National Gallery of Canada, where she got to experience works by Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Marcelle Ferron, and other abstract painters. ** A Drift I have become an abstraction, more linear than fully formed. A mere echo of the body that once contained me. Disruptions leave me stranded in my mind. Full of sound, fragments of shadow-thought. Words fail to cohere. The shift is subtle, deft, and nearly complete Kerfe Roig A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/ (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/. ** Walking into a Burning Forest Once I whirled in light roped for cedar scent. The space between branches splotched softly as white ash. The last occurrence was thirty-eight years ago. I lost the pathway of ferns singed when my lover died. The smell is now ripe orange clove. My knees are missing. I want creamed apricot antenna that touch. Oh, for joints to knot. If I could own quartz and tiger’s eye. John Milkereit John Milkereit resides in Houston, Texas working as a mechanical engineer and has completed a M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. His work has appeared in various literary journals including The Comstock Review and The Ekphrastic Review. His fourth collection of poems, Lost Sonnets for My Unvaccinated Lover, is forthcoming soon from Kelsay Books. ** Maelstrom school confuses him especially words all squiggly print and swirls his belly awash with the swash and churn of learning he thinks of the spin cycle of his mother’s machine or the whirlpool he saw on YouTube undercurrents dragging him down in the turmoil of tides back home his grandmother sits in the recliner stirring tepid tea watching small bubbles like the froth that fills her head her words are long gone rusted in the grind of age but she silently strokes his hand the circular motion surprisingly soothing Kate Young Kate Young lives in England and enjoys writing poetry, painting and playing the guitar, ukulele and mandolin. Her poems have appeared in various webzines, magazines, and chapbooks. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlet A Spark in the Darkness has been published by Hedgehog Press and her next pamphlet Beyond the School Gate is due to be published in the next month. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet. ** Whirlpool Ode Wonder of a draining tub, How we played together, Me, plunging my fingers into you, You, dis- and re-appearing like A magician’s trick. How I have stirred You into tea/coffee/soup/juice/milk Anything that mixes–you, the blender’s Secret, sucking every ingredient towards Oblivion, the center mess of spinning blades. How I imagined you in video games: Transport to another world, the opening Mouth of an impossible monster, Entrance to the ship graveyard, An endgame spell to seek out. How you have come around and Around in every stage of life: You, clockwise/counterclockwise myth Of the hemispheres’ flushing toilets. You, vortex of Pirates and Little Mermaids, You, Yates’s Widening Gyre, You, symbol Of the spiral curriculum, You, coming back ‘Round again, You, sweeping lines on Bonge’s Canvas, the top of you, an open eye, the Bottom of you pointed in like the legs Of a tomato cage, a black wire Funnel sifting beige, bending More like a wooded path Than an endpoint. Inverted swirling water cone, I am caught in your drift, and have been For years, a penny circling the rim of The donation jar, ever-descending in In tighter arcs awaiting that final, Inevitable Drop. Ian Evans Ian Evans is a writer and teacher with a B.A. in English and an Ed.M. in Secondary English Education and the 2023 recipient of Somerset County Teacher of the Year. He has previously co-created “The Mechanic,” a graphic poem, and his words have appeared on Thanatos Review and The Ekphrastic Review. He lives in Highland Park, New Jersey, with his wife, who is also a writer and teacher. ** Skylight that let the moon slide by the walls long rusted-- the night of white shadows moon spread over you. That night of fragrance and the earthen lamp when the incense burned-- the flame crawled into cracked corners and peace rested on your face. I kept the flame ablaze, watched the ashes drop. In silence, by the writing desk until the light broke the night-- the night of fragrance and the flame. Each day the birdsong fills the air, by now I set the stalks of tuberoses. Abha Das Sarma An engineer and management consultant by profession, Abha Das Sarma enjoys writing. Besides having a blog of over 200 poems (http://dassarmafamily.blogspot.com), her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Spillwords, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Sparks of Calliope, Trouvaille Review, Silver Birch Press, Blue Heron Review, here and elsewhere. Having spent her growing up years in small towns of northern India, she currently lives in Bengaluru. ** Dream Whispers Haunted by rural landscapes clad in frozen pellets from last night’s storm, I am touched by shadows of shag hickory, sassafras, and choke cherry boughs as I search for the trail’s opening-- beyond the underbrush, a fog-laden field is faintly outlined by silent silhouettes of towering hundred foot white pine. Maybe I’m still daydreaming about our time together under cranberry sunsets. Dr. Jim Brosnan A Pushcart nominee, Dr. Jim Brosnan is the author of Nameless Roads (2019) and Driving Long Distance (forthcoming 2024). His poems have appeared in the Aurorean (US), Crossways Literary Magazine (Ireland), Eunoia Review (Singapore), Nine Muses (Wales), Scarlet Leaf Review (Canada), Strand (India), The Madrigal (Ireland), and Voices of the Poppies (United Kingdom). He holds the rank of full professor at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI. ** Watery Grave When Charybdis swirled Ulysses into her vortex Scylla laughed her heads off When his ship of fools sailed into allegory between the devil and the deep blue sea The heinous ones chose the lesser of two evils And thrust Homer onto the horns of his own dilemma Donna-Lee Smith Donna-Lee Smith so appreciates what she learns from exploring ekphrastic challenges. For example, she was woefully clueless about Homer’s work spawning so many allegories. ** Iron Corsets Corps de Fer, 1739: " A bodice with small iron plates for badly grown girls." French-German Dictionary "By 1944, Kahlo's doctor had recommended a steel metal corset instead of plaster." Frida Kahlo, Wiki Biography " Once there was a machine for breathing. It would embrace the body and make a kind of love. And when it was finished, it would rise like nothing at all above the earth." "The Iron Lung" Stanley Plumly The colours of the Fall evening were somber. The brightly coloured leaves -- the deciduous ones -- had been lost in a heavy rainfall. Storm faded for the promise of the first snow; the wind whispered a silent prayer for the left-over leaves, now like left-over fabric -- the remnants of fashion in burnt sienna and yellow ochre with flashes of white and red (blood and moon) a memory of work stored in a funnel-shaped, black wrought iron container its bars like a jail, or a door closed in a dungeon beneath the court of Catherine d'Medici a Queen in a gown of odd olive gold like fabric that showed through the slated sides of a black iron cage in the deserted costume room. It had been suggested (and later disproved) that Catherine was the first to wear a metal corset, her body like a rigid hour glass; and it's hard to imagine, in the 21st century, an armourer (or blacksmith) bending over corsets hammer held to shape "lingerie" heated by fire, not love. Cate paused to read information on a playbill, an historic adaptation of the Medicis' belief in prophecies; in the predictions of Nostradamus a political figure in Catherine's Court where armor and fashion were closely entwined. In medieval French, the word corset referred to doublets and gowns and body armor. Reading the playbill, Cate thought of Jean d'Arc wearing a breastplate her spiritual strength a vision as the morning light made the shining metal a mirror of the Crusades, Knights and the vagaries of life and death: When Men's & Women's bodies are crook'd and deformed medieval definition goes on to say, they wear iron bodies and will endure anything to make them straight again (Sermon, 1632, clergical author unknown.) On a stage in the Great Hall of the church, Cate had played Frida Kahlo wearing a white peasant blouse and the blood-red patterned skirt of a gypsy part of the material pieces left behind by a costume seamstress like hope for a miracle, Kahlo living after her body was impaled by a streetcar railing in Mexico City. For months she lay in a hospital her time occupied by painting flowers on the heavy plaster body cast that held her, broken and immobile until the plaster was exchanged for a metal cage to protect the pieces of her broken spine. Dark-haired Cate -- eyebrows reaching up like blackbird wings -- had been, she supposed, a "star" playing Frida, teardrops falling as they had in Kahlo's self-portrait, Broken Column, her performance motivated by tragedy -- the prediction that Kahlo's injuries were so great she would die..... But she survived, and the director had added a songbird in a cage -- an ethereal double -- a way for Kahlo to move upward -- to fly -- her imagination guided by life-giving dreams of an alternate world; one like her cousin had dreamed, a reality outside her body, trapped in an iron lung before Jonas Salk discovered a polio vaccine. Preparing for her role, Cate thought of the centuries of pain -- like a vortex individually illustrated with tattered images of history -- time spiraling downward to a single, simple everyday moment when she stirred her cafe latte, flecks of foam swirling in a caffeinated cosmos; or pages in a playbook caught in a maelstrom of words -- a dialogue of life and death -- a whirlpool; or an artist revealing the spirit fruits of heaven as Diego Rivera painted watermelons. Laurie Newendorp Laurie Newendorp writes of Frida Kahlo, a free spirit threatened by serious injury. Dusti Bonge is considered the first Abstract Expressionist in Mississippi. Kahlo appears in Iron Corsets, a poem suggested by Bonge's Whirlpool, because of the seeming rigidity of the black bars restraining the movement of the painting's colour swatches. Linked to crossing time as was Newendorp's poetry thesis, Crossing Time Lines: The Grandfather Journey (1992), Iron Corsets travels from the 16th century Medicis to Kahlo's crippling injury; and to Stanley Plumly's beautiful poem, "The Iron Lung," his impression of what the mind can create when the diseased body is immobile. Laurie Newendorp's book, When Dreams Were Poems, attempts to weave poetry and art with nature and life. Honoured many times by The Ekphrastic Review challenges, she lives in Houston, her writing enriched by ekphrastics as she works on her next book of poems. |
Challenges
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