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 Hymen, oh Hyméné! by Juan Luna. Deadline is September 15, 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 LUNA 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, September 15, 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.
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Red Enso The wind blew clouds across the sky in rapid scrawl as streaks, puffs, and stacks—semaphores written across the landscape of Himalayan peaks, shrouded then revealed—I longed for one last glimpse of Mount Kailash before I climbed into the car, the flaps of my cap beat against my ears but held my hair inside, no strands whipped my face, but I could not walk to the open car door yet, I turned to my Ama-la, prayed this wouldn’t be the last time I’d see her, when the sun suddenly appeared. Everything fell still into the blue sky. Mount Kailash appeared. Ama-la clutched her apron, afraid to wave, I ran to her and held her tight. She embraced me. I shut my eyes tight, dots of light appeared against the red skin of my eyelids. I tucked my head into her shoulder and saw single red circle. I had not seen this circle with eyes open, now only one image appeared, not two, not one for each shut eye, but a single image, I wondered why with both eyes closed I didn’t see two images, but instead this single red ring as though painted purposefully by one hand, then I heard my mother’s voice: “Jampa my love, it is this circle of love that keeps us together whether perfect or imperfect, and I know you have seen it as I do with my eyes closed. We will never be apart in mind, only by distance, and you will always be my child, my beloved boy, though I must let you go, your journey from here may seem to go into a line of an unknown future, or an arc from young to vigorous adult, then to old, or as a series of circles, morning to night to next morning to night, that elapses in days, or months, year after year, but at the end of your life, this circle will tie you onwards to the next time you return, even when you take your last breath, you might recognize me as someone you knew before, I might be your child next time, so do not miss me. In parting, we'll meet again.” Annie Bien Annie Bien has published two poetry collections, flash fiction, and a pamphlet, Messages from Under a Pillow, that includes her own illustrations. She is an English translator of Tibetan Buddhist scriptures. Forthcoming is a historical novel on the Sixth Dalai Lama, co-written with Robert Thurman. https://www.anniebien.com/ ** To Jiro Yoshihara Regarding Red Circle on Black art renewing life reflecting -- imperfectly -- life renewing art 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. ** Obsidian Bold boiling lava hits icy ocean cold as mistrust misunderstanding and all other mis- It all happened too fast No time for crystallization Sharper than diamond and surgeon’s steel blade A giant black tape 0n the mid-melt mouth of the ocean Jiang Pu Jiang Pu, Ph.D., is an author, editor and translator of many textbooks, literature and children's books; and is the founder of NextGen Education. Her recent poems have appeared in California Quarterly, Caesura, Topical Poetry, among others. She grows a bee & butterfly garden in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her first name means "a big river". www.jiangpu.org ** Choose You must decide-- inside or out. All black. That will ooze buckets about who you are—what spills and what is con- tained. Do not get seduced by the O ring—crimped. Choose your purgatory. Jay Brodbar Jay Brodbar: "My family here in Toronto and my writing practice are my two pillars, the latter getting a boost in coping with isolation in the time of plague. I have published in various journals including McGill Street, Parchment, Reform Jewish Quarterly. My poem, What We need Beyond the Pale, appears in the Poems in Response to Peril: An Anthology in Support of Ukraine, with proceeds going to PEN Ukraine." ** Only Night Knows For Sure A circle blazing orange-red against darkness. Snake aflame in the matte-black night. Fireworm corkscrewing through midnight-blue water. Night as it passes through the orange-red, crackling circle in Yoshihara’s painting like words an ear picks from the crackle of a flame. From the ravings of sooty beaks. A rave of ravens. Gathering secrets tucked beneath ebony pinions, clucked about in small talk and inuendo. What does night know of me as it pulls me through that circle? Pulling me by the eyes through an illusion of motion in the painting. Are they words as snake venom, which can stop a heart? As the neurotoxin in fireworm spines, setting the world into a tailspin when brushing past? My wife says I dwell too much on words and things passed long ago. Wheel in a rut. But can a circle go anywhere other than back as it moves forward? Follow the tread—a line of burning blood—and look at how it falls back onto itself over and over again. Recollections on an axle. Rumors turning. A conspiracy of ravens, gossiping within earshot. A scorching circle. The circle in the painting, going nowhere and round and round. My mother says, from among the dead, that I dwell too much on the pain of the living. It’s like the poet who says he’s studied and become intimate with the speed of darkness.[2] So fast it’s always here, coming from nowhere.[3] Circling in an ocean current. Burning at the slightest touch. Gravity pulling continually from the hole of a circle. On a current of air, caught in a feather. As if the cells which compose the hole crackled, ready to take the cells which fashion the circle with them. On a current of breath. A treachery of ravens, gathered and cackling. Glistening black marbles in feathered heads, taking in the entire world. Black news caught in crystal balls. My father says there’s something inside the hole, but best not to look too long or too deeply into it. A circle burning through the black background of a painting. A reverse brand, seen from under the skin, searing. Marking its own. The fireworm lands and the tingling from its spines begins. My brother looked long and red into the blackness of that hole, peeling apart its layers, before he finally fell through it. He’s still falling. I hear him in an owl’s screech. In the grinding rust between axle and white-enameled steel wheel on a red child’s wagon. The wheel turns, revolving around dead things, as ravens are wont to do. Searching with the whole eye. With the hole in the eye. The hole beneath a fiery brow. Night knows about this. About him. Is he why I fear waking in less than utter dark? In the turning of a worm—a word? —something burns through and is carried, floating. Playing the circle where it lies, in the truth toward which a golf game would return? My wife, who used to play golf, says to hit the ball and move on—the circle will take care of itself. Circle at the game/s end. Reversing, circling back as if gazing deeper at a painting. Raven in the hole at the circle’s core, cawing for the others in its unkindness. Trickster, roosting in the hole of my circle, pulling with its beak. The caw in the morning, an orange-red tear though myself. Is it actually the night wanting me back? Is it my brother wanting me back? Better to play the ball, move on. Jonathan Yungkans Jonathan Yungkans finds time to write while working as an in-home health-care provider, aided by copious amounts of coffee in the early-morning blackness. His work has appeared in MacQueen's Quinterly, Synkroniciti, Unbroken and other publications. ** Red Circle on Black Here against the black background of grief Love inscribes itself in a red circle which grief can never swallow. As long as I remain in that red circle eternally, darkness will not cover me. Elissa Greenwald Elissa Greenwald, a retired English teacher, now prefers writing to reading. ** The red ring is perfectly imperfect: a universe expanding, contracting, breathing a heartbeat an umbilical cord a circumcision a tick’s bite bulls eye unleashing a crippling palsy the burnished brass plucked on a carousel ride with cackling cousins a secured seal - what no human may tear asunder Grandma Flo’s jiggly, canned fruit filled bundt Jello mold cupping marks - a practice that failed to clear the fluid in time an unknowable centre adrift in the black of everything else Jeffrey G. Moss Jeffrey G. Moss was born and bred in Brooklyn, USA. After 32 years guiding 13/14 year olds in crafting their worlds he has finally started following some of his own writer’s advice. His creative non-fiction has appeared in Bending Genres, Cagibi, Hunger Mountain Review, Under the Gum Tree, and Hippocampus. Find him on IG @jeffgm. ** Temptation of the Circles Everyone at home was eagerly waiting for Diwali—Indian festival of lights which adds extra sentences to autobiographies and school essays every year. The walls of home had become fierce like Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl.” The old paint had already started falling off the walls like the cascade of descending swaras. Festival brings offers, bonus and loans. Father had applied for a festival loan from his office to purchase paint. The good news was that his officer’s pen tagged Rescued screamed on the paper—-‘sanctioned.’ Money was drawn, paint accessories purchased and furniture was weaponed with tattered and unusable bed sheets, newspapers so as to protect it from falling wet paint. The room was already ready yesterday and whitewashing had started. Now what next? The next threat was Vani. Vani was their two-and-a-half year old naughty baby girl. They already knew about her unexpected quirks. Just six months back she graduated from crawling, zigzag to perfect walking. And see now—-she’s gliding! Her round, eyes on her round face reflect infinite energy! She would live like a butterfly hovering around every flower of the garden. At one moment she’s on the window pane at another she’s at the diwan. She would fall down, rehearse again, cry and laugh again, and then again run—-laughing, falling, jumping—- bare foot. All holes tempted her. Many holes are circles after all! Compelled by her instincts she’d go happy around inserting her fingers in running-electric-sockets or any other empty spaces she would come across, sometimes even hers or father’s nostrils. The pet Jimmy had mixed feelings of love, subordination and scare for her as once she startled him by putting her finger in his bum when he while asleep and was already being sniffed by one of his street opponents, in dream. While exploring her senses, yesterday, she poked her fingers on the newly painted wall. Two times she spoilt the paint. What can she do? Colours fascinated her. “Pappa..pappa…gimme colours papa,” Vani babbled, her eyes already hypnotised with ‘her’ expected answer, present in future, “Yes. Yes. Why not Vanu. These all buckets are for you Darlo.” The father turned towards mother and instructed with a flat high tone (mainly the first one) you only find in Mandarin, “You’ve to take care of this monkey before she spoils everything. I told you to send her to the play school but you denied. You never do what I say.” Listening the word ‘school’ Vani clenched mother’s legs and looked at the father through the green ripples of her sari. Mother caressed Vani with love. "She’s not even three. Don’t you remember how uncontrollably she cried when we sent her once?” Mother instructed Vani to bring her notebook on which she could write with a pencil. Vani ignored the pencil-book-idea and made herself invisible behind the door from where in half crying tone she kept insisting on dripping her fingers into the bucket of paint. Suddenly accompanying the drizzling sky, the Sun came to a position where it could enter the room through the window and reflect the mixed colours kept in the bucket forming young handsome rainbow on the white wall. “Alright Mom, pencil. Gimme one,” Vani babbled in a language which only her mother could translate. But there was no reply. Father had gone out to bring thinner for the paint and mother had gone to the veranda to collect wet clothes from outside. Vani knew that it’s ‘the’ opportunity. She ran towards her coveted aim like the best female sprinters of the would-be The Paris Olympic— 26 Jul, 2024. Like a philosopher holding his jaw on his hairy paws, Jimmy gazed suspiciously at her activities, hiding his ipseity with his fluffy tail. Vani inserted her fingers into the paint tub and scribbled circles on the wall depicting something which only she or her God knew. Droplets of colour poured on her arms, nostrils, lips and everywhere around the floor. She painted many many circles. Every circle was different. Enchanted by the magic of circles she made, she would poke her finger in the middle of it. She went on and on, destabilising centres, unexhausted. That wall was now an admixture of beauty and beast. After a while mother came inside. She saw Vani and the wall, the whirlpool of colours around her. Her mouth opened agape, the wet cloths she held on her shoulder fell down with a thud of Newton’s apple. She went running towards her and yelled, "Vani! Vani!!" Sandeep Sharma Sandeep Sharma is an Asst Prof of Comparative Literature at Government College, Diggal (HP), India. He is Associate Editor of the journals In Translation (Université Badji Moktar de Annaba) and Traduction et Langues (University of Oran 2). He received the Award of Academic Excellence (2022) by the Arab Translators’ Association for his contribution to research and linguistics. He has published his works with Impspired (UK); SIL International (US);The Yellow Medicine Review (Southwest Minnesota State University); PoetryXHunger (Maryland State Arts Council, US); Southwest Word Fiesta (Silver City, New Mexico); Lothlorien Poetry Journal (US); The Anguillian (Anguilla); In Translation (Algeria), HP University (India) and so on. His book on Translation Studies is made available as a reference book in the universities of Africa, Ukraine and India. His page, with 277k viewers, remains at the top 1% position on academia.edu. Here is the link to the page https://hp-in.academia.edu/SsandeepSharma ** caught in the crossfire he is a volcano threatening to erupt a gasp of thin-red-lipped fear a bloodshot eye on high alert a cigarette burn on flaky skin a target ripe for a sniper’s gun a hole in the heart erasing love a petalless poppy weeping blood a scarlet wreath laid at his feet Kate Young Kate Young lives in England and enjoys writing poetry, painting and playing the guitar and ukulele. 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. ** Onxy Mood O stony sorrow O sorry loss O loop too hollow O no tomorrow O woozy cocoon O poppy knot O ghostly blotch O cold clock stop O cross fox howl O owl scorn dollop O phlox blossom spool O sky myrrh-blown O bloodshot body O scorch of pox O colon clot O lot of horror O shock of drool O snort of rot O joy forgot My bowl of soot Helen Freeman Helen has poems published on various sites and magazines and regularly submits to The Ekphrastic Review. She currently lives in Durham, England. Instagram @chemchemi.hf ** The Nip Stare at red circle on black for mere minutes, then look away to a white wall. The image reverses, rehearses. Red turns green, black urns white. Boundless roundness. Rods and cones, my brain moans and gives up, spluttering, gasping for air. In the blink of an eye, the wink of trying to change things. Infinite jest, circle with a nip taken out by a hungry universe. It’s not perfectly round, more human, with foibles. The caged circle too contained by the dark. Chipped like her toenail polish, tonal dripping with blood. Wild and pacing, bracing for an escape. Never turn your back on the circle. Red eyes flashing in the dark. Lynne Kemen Lynne Kemen lives in Upstate New York. Her chapbook, More Than a Handful was published in 2020. Her work is anthologized in Seeing Things (2020) and several others. She is published in Silver Birch Press, The Ravens Perch, Fresh Words Magazine, Spillwords, Topical Poetry, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and Blue Mountain Review. Lynne stands on the Board of Bright Hill Press. She is an editor for the Blue Mountain Review and a lifetime member of The Southern Collective Experience. Her book of poetry, Shoes for Lucy will be published in 2023 by SCE Press. ** Poet’s Wudu Unroll the prayer rug. Surrender to surrender. Kneel in the pew, needing to be kneaded. Settle on the cushion cross legs close eyes. Bow begin the kata yin leading yang arrive where time neither ticks nor tocks feel the hand of Author True holding the pen of your life. Mike Wilson Mike Wilson’s work has appeared in magazines including Amsterdam Quarterly, Mud Season Review, The Pettigru Review, Still: The Journal, The Coachella Review, and in Mike’s book, Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic, (Rabbit House Press, 2020), political poetry for a post-truth world. He resides in Lexington, Kentucky, and can be found at mikewilsonwriter.com ** Blind Spot Early Christmas Day, she catches a glimpse of an unwanted gift: a grey dot, lingering like some weird charcoal patch, stuck over her right eye. It blocks her stars’ jazzy blues. It steals a host of angel shapes. It snatches the tree-lights’ dazzle. All she can see is a bright red halo, filched from Santa’s hat, beaming back at her like a Bloody Mary, half-drunk. Dorothy Burrows Based in the UK, Dorothy Burrows enjoys writing poems, flash fiction and short plays. Her work has been published both online and in print journals. She often doodles in circles. ** 無限 (Infinite) by squaring the circle, this unaccustomed stroke of artistic notion unknown by many a man you wonder if they’ll understand your dab of red on black as conjured in your mind avant-garde, you hope they exclaim as impasto flows by many a field and fallow but time will tell, you know as for all innovative lexes you ARE a pioneer of vicissitude in the realm of the inured *** oh, unblemished stillness unfolds in my mind as I try to fathom how it feels to be liberated from the shackled chains of the unyielding traditions in this Self of cyclic effort we call the perpetuation of Life Andrea Damic Andrea Damic born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, lives and works in Sydney, Australia. She’s an amateur photographer and author of prose and poetry. She writes at night when everyone is asleep; when she lacks words to express herself, she uses photography to speak for her. She spends many an hour fiddling around with her website https://damicandrea.wordpress.com/ ** What my heart yearns for now. L. She's only 6 years old but she swings the fire poi like a pro carving a perfect red right angle into the November blackness. Wrists and elbows flick sharp, fluid. She's Zorro. My heart is so full it could burst the Thames Barrier with an ocean of bluebells, king- fishers, Finding-Nemo-fishes, with an ocean of electricity all around the w w w w w w world. O. She's only 6 years old but she has the poise of a pro swooshing a perfect red circle through the November chill. Her arm spinning from her shoulder. My heart is so full of pride Scottish pipe bands march up my arteries, with kilts and drums. Red sparks light up face-painted faces eating toffee apples. Red sparks light up sheets of copper for the copper-bowl-beating. She lassos us all together with a perfect red circle of molten candy strawberry, raspberry, cherry. V. She's only 6 years old but she can write with molten glass in the air. She can spin and swing and change direction abruptly. Making a succession of red ticks, flick-booking on my retinas. My nostrils breathe smoke from the bonfire breathe cider, lentil curry, roasted pumpkin. In the distance snatches of sound from the singing workshop - chanting, clapping, laughing. My heart is a Venetian kiln full of Murano an Armada, a coastline of blazing beacons. Her fire trails whip us all together into a Big Top, into trapeze and clowns and elephants and funfair, into a circus. e. She's only 6 years old but she can spiral fire like candy floss like Celtic writing, like scarlet ribbons. Buzzards are mewing overhead. Clover and vetch grow under her toes. Red deer watch from the larches at the ruined monastery. She loops her red threads around us tying us all together, over and over. We hold our breath, scrunched up like empty packets of crisps in tight fists. Our hearts leap across the night, leap through my daughter's hoop of flame. saskia ashby saskia ashby is a UK visual/performance artist and poet. ** stillness [inhale] 1 2 3 4 [exhale] 5 4 3 2 1 [breathe]. ### Tonka Dobreva Tonka Dobreva is a writer and Christian life coach. Her work has previously appeared in Ekstasis Magazine and is forthcoming in The Amethyst Review. ** Ebb and Flow I chase my cousins into the laundry room. They shriek in laughter, tossing a wad of clothing back and forth, stashing it into the dryer, but I manage to peel away their fingers from the metal door—and it’s in that moment as my twin cousins have collapsed onto the floor with laughter, and I hold, triumphantly, a soiled piece of clothing--that I find out what menstruation is. I don’t remember when I first got my period. The doctors always ask me that, and so I estimate: middle school, 12 years old. For my mother, it happened in gym class. White shorts. Somersaults. Eternal embarrassment. She still winces when she tells the story. I’m diagnosed with PCOS–Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome–in college. Irregular periods, extreme pain, blood-clots-larger-than-a-quarter. But my breaking point is my first year of teaching. My roommate and I joke about how that first year begins to mirror the 10 Plagues of Egypt: lice, mice, and a three month long flood of blood. And it is a gush. I use triple layers of protection: super tampons, bedtime extra-long pads, specially designed period panties (black) that should never go in the dryer. I give up on wearing jeans and stick to black slacks. I stash tampons and pads everywhere—in my car, the bottom drawer of my desk at work, my purse, the pocket of my backpack. I drive with a towel over the seat of my car. I set alarms for 3:00 in the morning to remind me to take a pain killer or else I’ll never uncurl from the covers at 6:00. When my gynecologist appointment finally comes, my doctor warns me that if/when I try to have kids, it may be difficult. To solve the issue of my never ending period, she prescribes medicine to make my body shed all of the lining of my uterus. I cannot understand how there is still tissue and blood left to be sloughed off. But yet, somehow there is. The shedding continues a month into taking birth control before, finally, the madness ends. In the third year of trying for a baby, I buy the expensive digital ovulation and pregnancy tests because I can’t take the color game anymore. I need the shock of the answer in harsh, black lettering to believe it. No: you are not pregnant. No: you are not ovulating. Late at night, I google for hope: when will I ovulate if my cycle is 35 days long? 40 days long? 42? How heavy is implantation bleeding? How many days does implantation bleeding last? My period—both the lack of one and its reappearance—betrays me. In August 2022, the doctors inform us that my husband is missing something in his DNA; he can’t and will never be able to produce sperm. We both stop taking fertility medicine. We stop counting days and measuring colors and debating names. Instead, we research sperm donation, adoption, fostering. We cry. We question. We make depressing art. We vent about all the well-meaning nonsense we’re told. We promise to adopt a dog when Summer comes. We kayak in tandem and bicker about taking turns paddling. We dream about going on a cruise around Japan. We navigate the Chattahoochee River’s rapids and rocks in inner tubes, flip out into the two feet of cold water—and cackle as other pink and green tubes bump helplessly into us. And eventually, we loosen our grip on the grudges against our bodies. Annalee Simonds Annalee Simonds writes creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. She dares her high school students to use semicolons and em-dashes in their own writing. When she's not teaching, she dabbles in watercolour. She grew up in Georgia, but now lives in Utah. ** Red Circle on Black Target with no center. Big apple without core. Aimless fruit in sleepless city. Bruised, but given to the poor. Laura Gunnells Miller Laura Gunnells Miller is a writer in southeast Tennessee who enjoys exploring rural backroads and creating travel photography books. Her poetry has been curated by Artemis Journal, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, American Diversity Report and other publications. ** Into the Darkness Graves under a November sky, dark memories of wilting poppies, red blood, black mud, flooded trenches. Mouths without faces, bodies without limbs, fingers,arms, feet; here a skull lingers. Scarlet tissue in a lunar landscape, the dark side of the Moon. Rings of fire, of sacrifice, of heroism, wreaths of poppies, pride, pomp, patriotism. Beyond - vacancy, darkness, the wronged wait in the blackness, the nothingness of oblivion, for the glorious mirage. Stateless, without passports, nameless, awaiting that other, promised country on which the sun never rises. Sarah Das Gupta Sarah Das Gupta is a retired teacher living near Cambridge who also taught in India and Tanzania. She started writing last October after a stay in hospital, following an accident. Her work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies from ten countries, including US, UK, Canada, Australia, India, and Nigeria. Writing has been instrumental in learning to walk again. ** Can 0 Be More than Zero? Sometimes she pushes against the notch in the red ring, thinking it’s a hinge that will open to possibilities, but it doesn’t budge. + Sometimes she stands on a red cliff looking into the black face of a volcano, tired of trying to be chill. + Sometimes she walks in circles at the bus stop, creating the red strokes of a Japanese brush painting, but the bus never comes. Sandi Stromberg Sandi Stromberg’s full-length collection, Frogs Don't Sing Red, was published by Kelsay Books in April 2023 and includes several works nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Most recently, her poetry has appeared in The Orchards Poetry Journal, Panoply, San Pedro River Review, MockingHeart Review, Sappho’s Torque, The Ekphrastic Review, Waco WordFest Anthology: MOON, and Unknotting the Line: The Poetry in Prose. She is an editor at The Ekphrastic Review. Her poetry, translated into Dutch, can be found at Brabant Cultureel and at https://wwwtransito-ah.blogspot.com/2023/07/sandi-stromberg-vak-27-graf-no-66.html. ** Unborn Eye After Jiro Yoshihara After Tomas Transtromer First thing What do see? What do see, before re-entering? Somewhere back in the iris dark, Still joining the stars. What do see before yesterday returns, Wearing reverential all white, The lining of a black suit worn inside Out, as day is to night. What do see see uncorrupted with your Unborn eyes? Quick, someone is coming, remembering. Christopher Martin Christopher Martin is a poet and Buddhist living by the mouth of the Tyne on the north east coast of England. His work has featured in various publications and events. His debut collection is due out 2024 @theblackcatpoetrypress. ** Blast Crater The surrounding perimeter formed a closed curve, rim still aglow with heat from the mountain of smoking rubble that had collapsed into its epicenter. Hot ash covered everything and hung in the air like a plague of sand flies, biting, blinding. We could see there were no survivors. Then a mild breeze created an updraft, which became a whirlwind whose writhing column soared far into the heavens. We prayed it was loaded with souls at peace. R. A. Allen R. A. Allen's poetry has appeared in the New York Quarterly, B O D Y, The Penn Review, RHINO, The Los Angeles Review, Maier Museum of Art Journal of Ekphrastic Poetry, Alba and elsewhere. His work has been nominated for a Best of the Net and two Pushcarts. He lives in Memphis, a city of light and sound. bodyliterature.com/2020/02/17/r-a-allen/ ** monoku 1. not a perfect red circle, like existence itself gembun 2. the black seems more like storm clouds when red is circled within a black background... how brilliant the sunset haynaku 3. enso sacred circle black creates red Daniel Brown Daniel Brown has just published at age 72 his first collection FAMILY PORTRAITS IN VERSE and Other Illustrated Poems published by Epigraph Books. He has most recently been published in Jerry Jazz Musician and Chronogram Magazine and has been included in Arts Mid-Hudson gallery presentation Poets Respond To Art in Poughkeepsie, NY. ** Aubade with Circle Game after Joni Mitchell Someday I’ll love the bottomless swamp. They will tell him take your time… which means to begin by contemplating a dot, and then to reflect on a line wiggling as a sparkling redfish that spirals close to a dark-blue boat drawn off the coast, beaches with plenty of compact sand, throwing perfect, an auburn frisbee feeling like vinyl, an LP ready to needle the future, then gulf fallen, but recovered by your lover’s hand when the sky was full with high cloudlets. Despite the sloppy throws and blisters, you keep throwing. And catching, captive on the carousel of time… I’ll eventually love August, days dripping by. And the seasons they go round and round. And the frontier of a small radio, jostling the antenna to work—clothes as costume—before wonder, before we caught a dragonfly inside a jar. Cartwheels thru the town. Round with decent looks, and later, we escape the escape room masquerading as an art gallery full of painted ponies we press fingertips on. Lights dot up lines under a starry night to reveal clues which help secure the Declaration of Independence and unscramble wooden blocks to spell: teamwork. A hidden door unlocks. We can’t return we can only look. Yes, I love kissing farewell to old, traditional paint, monsters left inside at palace altars. Dear, let us throw our gentle bodies into the swamp. Peat forms coal, fuel for the simple gesture of joining together, sheets of someday. No, dreams don’t lose their grandeur of coming true… Oh, for the elusive, pristine circle. 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 Naugatuck River Review, San Pedro River Review, and previous issues of the The Ekphrastic Review. He has published two chapbooks (Pudding House Press) and three full-length collections of poems, including most recently from December, A Place Comfortable with Fire (Lamar University Literary Press). What a wild time it was- unbridled creation. Thank you to everyone who participated in our second annual ekphrastic marathon! Every one who tried this fun and gruelling writing event is a courageous soul. Reading the entries birthed during the marathon, and choosing some for this showcase, proved a difficult task, as always. What a wondrous variety of works were inspired. It was not easy to select a few from so many shining jewels. Congratulations to everyone whose work is here. They are in alphabetic order of author, except for the first two, which are the winning poem and the winning story. I am grateful to our editor Sandi Stromberg for her help choosing the winners. Congratulations to Roy J. Beckemeyer for his winning story, "Performance Memoir in Yellow" (which was inspired by two of the prompts!) Congratulations to Karen FitzGerald for her winning poem, "Manuela's First Baby." Let's do this again sometime! Lorette Flash Fiction Winner: Performance Memoir in Yellow He chose to misread her title, announce it as “Woman in the Wings,” so sat, stage left, alone in the spotlight, aglow, smoke curling from his Gitanes, and addressed the audience using his tobacco-thickened accent, described each step in a stage whisper as she danced it: how she unfurled her wings, there just off stage right, crooning “Oh, déployer ses ailes,” how she carefully revealed her slender nudity. Her blonde hair was the color of lemons, she wore the fragrance of Limoncello. He kept track of his place in his autobiography with his index finger, used it to feel the ink on the paper, to trace the words with which he had first described her, first revealed that she was his initial, his inimitable love, first told how his fingers would trace each wing vein from wingtip back to her body, how the wings might have been birthed by Caesarian Section rather than sewn as gossamer puppets, their intricate motions and movement controlled by her tapered fingers. He said nothing about how she eyed him from the cover of her folded arm, how she turned only enough for him to imagine seeing the slight swelling that would reveal her breast if she chose to turn a bit more, how she showed in the way her eyebrow arched to disappear into her cascading hair that she had had enough for one night. He glanced up, raised his own eyebrows, signaled for the lights to be darkened, left the audience only the afterimage of his radiance burned into the rods and cones of their vision, left them feeling (or imagining they felt) a slight swirling of air stirring the hairs on the backs of their necks as she whisked out from beneath the rapidly descending curtain, invisibly danced in midair the choreography he had described only moments before, their hearts aching with longing to see her, yet even then somehow satisfied to simply follow each move by sensing the evolving wake of her wings, feeling the delicate eroticism of his descriptions in the slight movements of air. They sat quietly in the fading golden afterglow of his memories, her ghostly absence, nurturing each recollection as if it now was one of their own. Roy J. Beckemeyer Roy J. Beckemeyer’s fifth and latest book of poetry is The Currency of His Light, (Turning Plow Press, 2023). Beckemeyer’s work has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards and has appeared in Best Small Fictions 2019. He has designed and built airplanes, discovered and named fossils of Palaeozoic insect species, and has traveled the world. Beckemeyer lives with and for his wife of 61 years, Pat, in Wichita, Kansas. His author’s page is at royjbeckemeyer.com. Poetry Winner: Manuela's First Baby While body grows to carry you, my sweet baby, I press down worry and banish fears so that you, mi amada, may flourish in your readiness for my arms. I will cherish each pain that causes you to pass from my body into this world where you will be loved, nourished and named Esperanza. Doubt tumbles from heart like snow from an evergreen. Fertile family tree. Karen FitzGerald Karen "Fitz" FitzGerald is a genre fluid writer. She has an MA in English Lit from Sonoma State University where she was recognized for her work in language centered theories of human behavior (1994) . She currently enjoys the beneficence of The Sitting Room (https://sittingroomlibrary.org) who grants her the privacy of their writing room, under the Redwoods in Penngrove, California. Dusk&Dawn in/on the Streets&Roads of Lavapuri For my mother, Mona 1. The street hawker (from up North) continues to sell watermelons on the wooden cart parked right next to a manhole (without a cover)—which is, most certainly, at least a decade older than the fruit seller—shouting: FRESH & CHEAP! 50 Rs per kg! But such catchy sales mantras do not fool a seasoned bargainer such as my mother. 2. A stray dog and a bitch are interlocked; local town boys are throwing stones—even their worn-out Bata flip flops—at the pair to somehow dislodge them. (This scene: a perfect analogy to understand as to why/how the intimate relationships and marriages break and fail in such a social setting.) 3. The reflection of the sunrays off the surface of freshly laid asphalt is as bright as the light being emitted from a white hole; even the most expensive of the Ray Bans can’t seem to offer any respite for the ordeals of the retinas. Never mind missing the red and the amber and the green of the occasionally functional traffic lights—barely installed at the required legal height and distance. 4. The people continue to stick on to their favourite political demagogues like houseflies to sugar. Now they’re carrying our rallies against the “Foreign Intervention”; now they’re conducting protests to condemn the “Inflation”; now they’re organising sit-ins against the “Character Assassination”, and what have you. For a proper escape and/or catharsis, I’d dare suggest, the proper venue is: discos/clubs, pubs/bars, gigs/concerts, cinema, art, literature, poetry, sports, and tourism. 5. Left, right & centre, the check posts have sprung up like the Spring Gardens in the Netherlands! (Cynicism, distrust, and pessimism are the signature traits, here. The society and people are not to be entirely blamed, I suppose—after all, they’ve been played at the hands of the economic hitmen & terror/ism mongers for many, many decades.) 6. Oh, YES!—the clerics are definitely fond of all the (post)modern paraphernalia that The West has to offer e.g. big TV screens, huge-ass SUVs, sexy smart phones/tablets, fast double decker airplanes, can’t-breathe-without SM (Youtube, Metaverse, TikTok, WhatsApp, etc.), scary tanks and fighter jets and kalashnikovs, interest based banking system, and what have you. But at the slightest hint of a critique of their religious dogmatism / fundamentalism, they’re out & about on the roads & in the streets like the deadly swarms of locusts vandalising retail shops, bus stops, and setting buildings on fire—even setting people on fire (under the banner of blasphemy), if need be! Oh, YES!—hypocrisy happens to be a trademark trait of the clerics, after all! 7. The businessmen (far too many), the lawyers (many, many), the generals (many), the academics (merely a handful), the poet (merely a handful), and the philosophers (hardly any) are barely moved by the respective scenes; for, the majority of ‘em have been but only conditioned under such a commonplace. (After all, the in-your-face Social Class System works as the fuel to their raison d'être-fire! The verb named ‘Change’ is as if کفر/Kufr in their sacred books.) Saad Ali Saad Ali (b. 1980 C.E. in Okara, Pakistan) has been brought up and educated in the United Kingdom and Pakistan. He is a poet-philosopher and literary translator. His new collection of poems is titled Owl Of Pines: Sunyata (AuthorHouse, 2021). His work has been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology. He likes learning different languages, travelling by train, and exploring cities on foot. To learn further about his work, please visit www.saadalipoetry.com. X You offer your dreams like an open palm, cloud-like and beckoning. High above the earthen plane, laden with the people we were, you keep watch in the evening sky, hoping to catch a glimpse of our past selves in the future. But your eyes begin to bleed from the staring. The beauty that feeds your mind in the night causes pain in the light of the rising sun. I know you want to believe in Fate, or, that there’s something cosmic that binds us. I want to believe it, too, and some might say that’s enough. But whatever tie exists between us, it is not meant to bind. Keep my likeness on its pedestal, if you must. I won’t begrudge you that. Just promise me you’ll come down from your mountainous perch, find shelter from the storms in another lover’s arms. Brown with waiting, the torchbearer falls-- God is watching Caitlin M.S. Buxbaum Caitlin M.S. Buxbaum is a writer and teacher from Wasilla, Alaska. She currently serves as CEO of Red Sweater Press, President of Alaska Writers Guild, and is working on her MFA in Creative Writing with Antioch University LA. She is also on the marketing team for Lunch Ticket, Antioch's online literary magazine. Learn more about her and read more of her work at caitbuxbaum.com. Love Crate Annie saw red when Jon told her “I just want to be fair and square with you: we’re at different stages in life.” She would bend his jagged thoughts into her straight-line itinerary diamondring-marriage-house-children-dog. She cooked all his favorite food for his meals: shrimp scampi with penne, goat cheese raviolis, pesto fusilli, stuffed him with rosemary pork chops and petits choux with pastry cream until the buttons of his shirt burst and she had to sew him up like a fat trussed goose. She roped him tighter, stowed him in her crate. One by one, she raised the rods to cage him in: no more guys’ night out, no more video games, tracker on his phone leaving only the tiniest square of yellow sun for his freedom. He grew blue, stopped eating until he became thin as a thread, slipped through his prison bars, and disappeared into the sky. Christine H. Chen Christine H. Chen was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Madagascar before settling in Boston where she worked as a research chemist. Her fiction has appeared in Bending Genres, Atticus Review, Visual Verse: An Anthology of Art and Words, and other journals and anthologies. Her work was selected for Wigleaf Top 50 2023, and she is the co-translator from French of My Lemon Tree (Spuyten Duyvil, forthcoming late 2023). Read more at www.christinehchen.com Fair Eva She is a writer’s daughter, and pictures him tearing pages from his pad, as vapour trails down soaking walls. He demands her to arrange the flowers, and her sister won’t do either: they paint. Early morning, her rosing thoughts direct domestic tea, her bird- eye’s view wins over a master. The salon starts showing her pastels, and she draws on a graveyard of time, fills a vase of passion. Have worlds always been turned down, settings ever so impressive? Colours grow, as petals weather on. She sneaks through careful flowers, and might mark: a men-society opens slowly to a woman. Silk and satin seem not real painting gear, but what climbs over patios, is right what she wants to possess, on purpose. The hope and dream are that she may be captured by collectors, alive, alive. Kate Copeland *Fair Eva is the name of a pink rose. Kate Copeland started absorbing books ever since a little lass. Her love for words led her to teaching & translating; her love for art & water to poetry…please find her pieces @The Ekphrastic Review, Poets’ Choice, First Lit.Review-East, Wildfire Words, The Metaworker, The Weekly/Five South, New Feathers, AltPoetryPrompts a.o. Her recent Insta reads: https://www.instagram.com/kate.copeland.poems/ Over the years, she worked at literary festivals and Breathe-Read-Write-sessions, recent linguistic-poetry workshops were via the IWWG (more workshops in the making). Kate was born @ harbour city and adores housesitting @ the world. Evening Itinerary of Two Septuagenarians We choose our TV dramas from the category “Scenic.” Why not disguise the demise of our own dazzle in someone else’s daydream? Hills drowning in soft mystery of moss, we board a fleeting train and settle into a dance staged long before we began. When the season ends, we’ve already chosen our next couched adventure - descent into Bordeaux’s distilled elegance, camera swooping over wineries castled in stone surrounded by labyrinth fields seducing us with sun stoked greenery, stirring the pleasure pot of memories of a rented car that swept us too between those winding vines of southern France. The plots are incidental, tired trails of handsome men and gorgeous women, the underside of their riches exposed in some tawdry murder. But dozing in the sustenance of our just finished dinner, we are unphased by their decay or the wit of the detective who uncovers all the clues we miss. We imbibe mountains, sunsets, turquoise ocean, sip ever half full glasses of rose. Joanne Durham Joanne Durham is the author of To Drink from a Wider Bowl, winner of the Sinclair Poetry Prize (Evening Street Press 2022) and On Shifting Shoals (Kelsay Books 2023). She finds Ekphrastic writing fascinating and won two awards for Ekphrastic poems in 2023: Third Wednesday's annual poetry contest and the Mary Ruffin Poole Prize. A Pushcart nominee, her ekphrastic poems have appeared in numerous journals, including The Inflectionist Review, Dodging the Rain, and Litmosphere (finalist for Lit/South Award). She lives on the North Carolina coast, with the ever artful ocean as her backyard and muse. https://www.joannedurham.com/ Peace Offering But what if the sign was a thick slice of layered cake, filled with sweet-tartness of lemon curd? What if you could taste my apology in each bite? Gabby Gilliam Gabby Gilliam's poetry has appeared in One Art, Anti-Heroin Chic, Plant-Human Quarterly, The Ekphrastic Review, Vermillion, Deep Overstock, Spank the Carp, and others. It has also appeared in anthologies from Pure Slush, White Stag Publishing, Black Hare Press, Raven’s Quoth Press, Devil’s Party Press, and more. You can find her online at gabbygilliam.com or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/GabbyGilliamAuthor. All that Disappears the light is almost gone swallowed by clouds sky no longer blue a soup of green and brown day and darkness both the same cars rust in the fields erode in air with birds and trees nothing grows it’s silent here on Earth: glaciers melted oceans filled with smoke and glass empty rivers no voices it’s over Maryann Gremillion Maryann Gremillion: "For years and years I tried to fit in conventional work places that crushed my soul but provided a living. I don't have to do that anymore! Hurray! I am grateful to have found myself. Writing and art matter." Even After After the blood pooled and dried and dripped and flowed—because your kitchen floor was built on a slant you always meant to fix—after the police arrived—after they searched for a note—after they drove you away—body covered in a white sheet-- after the three weeks it took to locate a relative-- after the flames consumed your bones—after the death certificate arrived and I flew out of the chair, out of my body—after I screamed into the abyss of the Grand Canyon—after I lit candles and incense—after digesting the two words on the certificate located in the “Manner of Death” section-- Even after that, I still see you, all 6’2” of you, thin against an angry back drop of purple-black clouds, covered in camouflage, legs steady in the rushing current of the Housatonic River, your line casting with ease, the way a raven trusts its wings: without having to think about where to go. You’re home. Belonging only to yourself and the rush of water you couldn’t control, but learned to endure. Joyce Hayden Joyce Hayden is a former university writing professor. An advocate for underserved populations, Joyce has led generative writing groups for battered women, teens at risk and survivors of abuse. She continues to facilitate online writing classes and has taught a weekly Ekphrastic writing class for over three years. Her work appears in Al Jazeera English, The Yellow Arrow Journal, Manifest Station, and many other publications. Sing Sing to me with lute and lyre Sing to me on wind and fire Sing to me with lips and eyes Sing to me in truth and lies Sing to me of wings and birds Sing to me in loving words Sing to me in green and blue Sing to me in every hue Sing to me of magic beast Sing to me, then let us feast Sing today on river’s bend Sing tomorrow, never end Cathy Hollister Cathy Hollister is an older writer whose work celebrates treasures embedded in age, isolation, and continual readjustments. When not writing you might find her on the dance floor enjoying the company of friends or deep in the woods basking in the peace of solitude. Her work has been in Smokey Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, Open Door Magazine, Humans of the World Blog, Beyond Words Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, Poet’s Choice anthologies, and others. Her new book Seasoned Women is available at Poet’s Choice. She lives in middle Tennessee; find her online at www.cathyhollister.com No Longer Yesterday Hector sent me this small book—a handful of time—by messenger. A black book, white pages, dark lacey ink creeping all over the margins. A primer for how · All things grow rigid and bright · Stepping beyond the muddy smudge of shadow · Straight lines, sharp corners · Incandescence · Exposed bloom · Fire-found agonist · Wild sublimity · Sweep of land · Brokenness · Glistening Ending on the last page with · hatches and hatchlings · horizons of swoon · a dip Each line was a whole story, sediments of restless fish and tentacles//landed//lashing. At “dip,” I slipped off the planet—beyond the showcase of mullioned light into a puddle of possibility, just beyond the toes of my shiny, patent-leather shoes under my heavy, lamp-black skirt. I’m disappeared between the rough covers in the rough hands. What covers? someone asks. Some covers. Who asks? A covering. No one asks whose hands. · Swell · Swollen · Swoop · Slowly · Stallion · Smoke Who has gone back into the pages (me? Could it be me?) and added a layer of s’s? All this I was blind to. I stand by the window in the sunlight—no longer the woman who answered the door. Annaliese Jakimides Annaliese Jakimides is a writer and mixed media artist who grew up in inner-city Boston and raised a family on 40+ acres on a dirt road in northern Maine, growing almost all their food and pumping water by hand. She currently lives in a small city next to a library. She’s worked with environmental justice organizations, international arts groups, and people in prisons. Cited in national competitions, and nominated for a Pushcart and Best of the Net, her works have been included in many journals, magazines, and anthologies, and broadcast on NPR. annaliesejakimides.com Butterfly Woman I wanted to know these fragile wings understand why some choose flight: time and tenderness and tomorrows strength and sorrows and salvation When I emerged fully whole in 1958 my wings were immediately clipped I was taught the words home & now I was reminded to be nice, not kind Nice doesn’t get one very far along it swells the tongue & doesn't last Kindness is damp soil & sunshine some gentle rain and deadheading Paper wings are fragile and light our backsides are strong & naked in the places, our wings once grew shoulder blades: winged scapulas & once, we had teeth named wisdom Patty Joslyn Patty Joslyn lives in Vermont. She’s fascinated with death and birth as passages into new realms. She has been published in El Calendario de Todos Santos, poetsonline.org, VOYA, (Voices of Youth Advocates), Tupelo Press-30/30 Project-March 2015, Still Point Arts Quarterly, and several anthologies. Patty’s book ru mi nate was born in 2017. Patty has never fully recovered from empty nest syndrome or the fact she can no longer do a cartwheel. Interior from Strandgade It is 1900 where you are hiding, being careful not to be seen by the exterior world where your head in a book would be looked on as frivolous or a waste of time when you could have been learning to sew, to cook, to make babies or to turn down suitors that are not in your heart wishing you could find a lover who would accept your books, your music, your curiosity about what lay outside that window, beyond the tree branches that you have starred at so many times. The squares on the window pain, the rectangles on the door, the refraction on the floor give you hope. And dear, you stand, tired of being told to sit still like a little lady, a proper lady. If you could close your eyes and transport yourself over a century would you be surprised to learn that your country, your Denmark, encourages women to work and provides care for your children? Imagine. Jennifer B. Kahnweiler Jennifer B. Kahnweiler is a non-fiction author of five books and a poet who is based in Atlanta, GA. A favourite aunt gifted her with a book of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poems and she was hooked. She started writing poems during the pandemic, and received the Natasha Trethewey poetry prize from the Atlanta Writers Club. She has recently been published in the Avalon Literary Review and MacQueen's Quinterly. Music & Art Clasp Hands Meeting in the garden, flowers and vines encircling us. Birds in branches, peacocks displaying. Preening. We’re enfixed in fabric. Restriction of our movement in marked contrast to theirs. Yet the fabric flutters, print alive and moving. Music and art clasp hands. Ode to oud. Rattles rattle seeds. In the garden, we’re not resigned to the attics or nooses of society. We reign on Tuesday mornings. No grey–bright colours and forms. It’s a feast of senses. The whole garden is in dialogue, avian and Algerian Arabic. Who Who asks the owl as we twitter like birds. Lynne Kemen Lynne Kemen lives in the Great Western Catskills of New York and appears s in various literary journals. She published her chapbook, More Than a Handful, in 2020. Additionally, she contributes as an Interviewer and Essay Editor for The Blue Mountain Review, a culture-focused journal, and is a member of The Southern Collective Experience. Lynne's upcoming book, Shoes for Lucy, is set to be released in the fall of 2023 by SCE Press. Irish Swirl Ireland. Green hills. Fields of green where sheep graze. Long country roads past rolling, green hills. Small homes with thatched roofs touched by fresh moss. Friends pass on the country road and wave to the man by his small home. In the city. Dublin. Walking past Trinity College. Taking the way by St. Stephen's Green. "Look, there's Guinness Storehouse." Now the taverns. Fire glows on the pub side from the market stall. Drinks all around. Happy faces going red. In Belfast. One church. Another. We pass on opposite streets. We go, catching glares from shadows. The heat builds in our heads. Streets quiet. Then it comes. The bombs. Screams. Red haired children lie in sudden blood. Around the island, the ocean and the sea. The sea rises and falls in waves. Blue rolls one wave into another. Blue waves touch green Irish shores. Breezes blow fresh off waves and onto the land. The air becomes cool, clean, free. From hills by the shore, we discover open expanses. Norbert Kovacs Norbert Kovacs lives and writes in Hartford, Connecticut. He loves visiting art museums, especially the Met in New York. He has published stories recently in Blink-Ink, Ekphrastic, and MacQueen's Quinterly. His website: www.norbertkovacs.net. Four Aspects of Roses White, pink, deep pink, red. These colours cover all the aspects of love: Agape, storge, philae, eros-- Love of God, Love of parents for children, Love for friends and, then that deep love of one other that causes the wheel of creation to turn, arouses us to the beauty of the other three. I see these four colours joined, sitting in this vase and I wonder if my mother, a practical parent, not so demonstrative as other moms, a woman who eschewed poetry, read only blockbuster novels but who often filled a vase with roses such as these, in all four colours, all the colours of love, roses from her own garden. Did she understand more of love and its philosophy than I knew? Joan Leotta Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. She performs tales of food, family, and strong women. Internationally published as an essayist, poet, short story writer, and novelist, she’s a 2021 and 2022 Pushcart nominee, Best of the Net 2022 nominee, and 2022 runner-up in Robert Frost Competition. Her essays, poems, CNF, and fiction appear in Impspired, The Ekphrastic Review, Verse Visual, Verse Virtual, Gargoyle, Silver Birch, Yellow Mama, Mystery Tribune, Ovunquesiamo, MacQueen’s Quinterly and others. Her poetry chapbooks are Languid Lusciousness with Lemon and Feathers on Stone. heresy of paraphrase paraphrase is to say the same thing in less words / yet we attempt to suss meaning from / a poem, a painting, / a sculpture. / it is impossible / the exact nuance / the artist is trying to convey we each experience creative works from our own perspective / in this experience the meaning of art lies, / the essence of the thing is the thing, / it is a sacred other worldly thing, / goes beyond intent / intertwines with it / rumples the sheets and stays the night. Dane Lyn Dane Lyn (they/them) is a neurospicy, genderqueer, disabled, educator, poet, and glitter enthusiast in a love-hate relationship with Los Angeles, where they reside. Dane has an MFA from Lindenwood University, a ridiculous collection of succulents, and four scavenger hunt runner up ribbons. Dane’s work can be seen in Quillkeepers, Gnashing Teeth, Gutslut, and Imposter. They are currently finding out that editing an online poetry journal (Ink and Marrow) is both rewarding and a slog. Their debut chapbook by bottlecap press, bubblegum black, was released in early 2023 with rave reviews from their mom. They are on social media @punkhippypoet, and most of their published work can be seen at www.danelyn.net That Nagging Sense of Dread Can take me outside for a walk. I look up at the foggy sky, make out the image of the sea, Salt Island, a quick hike at low tide, is so murky it is as if it were a cloud that will float away. I have suffered such loss and heartbreak, but I know it can be easily forgotten and cast out by one gleaming moment of joy. The way one feels when a cloud finally parts and the heat of the sun warms the face, the whoo, hoo of Turtle Doves, or the sound of his flute echoing through our home, late at night when the rest of the world sleeps. I remember my mother, climbing with her to the top of the giant carnival slide, the lights of the fair pink, blue and gold, lighting our faces. A heart can ache from grief at unexpected moments and as I cross a path beneath the huge chestnut trees, I remember fall days when I gathered pails full of bronze prizes to show her. The vivid blue sky I see through the lush leaves reminds me of the wide world still waiting to be found, that would excite her so, and that sharp needle that’s been piercing my heart begins to melt. As I continue my walk, I come upon the soft green prickly pod with my toe. I lower my foot onto it to reveal its shiny bronze prize, the first of the season. Andrea Marcusa Andrea Marcusa's writings have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, River Teeth, New Flash Fiction Review, Citron Review, and others. She’s received recognition in a range of competitions, including Smokelong, Cleaver, Raleigh Review, Best Micro Fiction and others. She lives in New York City and is a member of the faculty at The Writer's Studio and is also a watercolourist. A Happy Death? This is what is left of you after seven centuries – a smiling face of beaten gold. Did you commission this piece before you died, knowing Death was near, or just because you knew you were Mortal even as you were worshipped, revered, holy, sacrosanct, divine? Were you granted the Happy Death? Did you know if you’d lived a good life? Were you at peace as the transformation from Life to Other approached? All we know is that we see you now as Happy. I hope you were. I hope there is Truth behind the mask. Laura McGinnis A Haiku Series Flowers like jewels Kaleidoscopic colours an orchard of dreams. Pomegranates ripe this tree is really a heart pulsing with strange fruit. Synchronised wonder: scarlet, crimson, royal blue seeds of tomorrow. Siobhan Mc Laughlin Siobhán is a poet from Co. Donegal in Ireland and has been published several times in The Ekphrastic Review. Her poems have been published in The Honest Ulsterman, Drawn to the Light Press, The Poetry Village, The Trouvaille Review, Bealtaine Magazine and Quince as well as others. She enjoys reading and writing ekphrastic poetry, both of which she finds is a meditative and transportive exercise. She blogs at www.a-blog-of-ones-own.blogspot.com Twitter: @siobhan347 Absent the Face Is that a finger or a nipple so erect it looks like a knife buried to the hilt where a nipple should be? The “standing” woman is headless, only her body shown. Against ochre ground, her dress would be ochre too except for the red wash on all the edges, even the tears on the left hip and the hole her left hand conceals where the genitalia are. The matching red legs wear stockings or blood. The red representations of shark teeth over her right thigh, parallel to her hidden mons and the valley beyond, say she is being eaten, washed in blood from vagina outward. The absence of head suggests she is personless, just wound, all body, for the face is the place of identity, of eye, mouth, nostril, the fragile loveable territory of the self which the Standing Woman may sell or surrender to whatever’s teeth are showing next to what might have been, in kinder times, love’s bower. Mary B. Moore Mary B. Moore’s poetry books include Dear If, (Orison Books); Flicker (Dogfish Head Prize, 2016); The Book Of Snow (Cleveland State UP, 1997). Chapbooks, both prize winners, are Amanda and the Man Soul (Emrys 2017) and Eating the Light (Sable Books 2016). Recent poems also appear in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Birmingham Poetry Review, Gettysburg Review, ekphrastic.net, Nelle, Terrain, Georgia Review, 32 Poems, The Nasty Woman Poet anthology, and more. A retired professor, she lives in Huntington WV. The Hand, The Remorse of Conscience Maureen accepts the box at the door, remembering how she felt when her son moved out six short years ago. It had felt like someone had cleaved her heart in two, thrown half of it into the river. She’d watched her husband and son chat excitedly, pretending to tidy the emptying room so she could shed the occasional tear without their comments. She’d doted on Mark for 18 years and then worried that he didn’t have the skills to live on his own, kind of like his father, Stephen, who couldn’t make dinner or do a load of laundry. Or wouldn’t, but aren’t they almost the same? He might have learned by now, two years on his own after what happened. The stereotype is that divorcing parents tell the children, “We still love you, but we don’t love each other.” But Stephen had stopped loving Mark, and Maureen too, by proxy, because he said she enabled Mark by paying for his rehab over and over. “Insanity is doing the same thing but expecting different outcomes,” Stephen lectured as he packed his own boxes. Maureen had no tears to hide. She thought of cooking dinner every night, sorting laundry for individual loads each week, sitting with Stephen for a heart-to-heart he never heard. She should have left him first. She should have followed Mark to California, held him in the palm of her hand so he always felt her love and never had to seek it from other sources. Allison Renner Hope The night sky was smeared with stars. She recognized Venus through the smoke choking the port city. Eventually the bombing would end, the fires would die. Would her house remain? Would she? Her sisters, their heads bent, prayed at her feet. One got up to cover her in a blanket of colours scented with lavender and put a cloth dipped in water and vinegar to her lips. There would be no midwife, no doctor, no husband. In the morning, one of her sisters opened the shutters and looked out the window. The fires had become embers, and a layer of ash like fresh snow covered the rooftops. When the sun shone bright orange across the bay, she held a baby boy in her arms. It was the happiest day of her life. Marjorie Robertson Marjorie Robertson is an essayist, novelist, short story writer and multilinguist. Her first novel, Bitters in the Honey, was a semifinalist in the 2014 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Writing Competition. Her other interests include creating art + text, studying how visual and sound affect the written word, and teaching writing to English language learners and the 1.5 generation. Ode Magic In a meagre dwelling in the yard of the Hen and Chickens public house, lived a curious hook-nosed old woman, known as ‘Ode Magic’. She lived alone, and eked out her living by dispensing spells and charms, for five shillings a turn. Some folk said Ode Magic had three crimson teats. Some said she could turn into a hare. Some said she had suckled a peppery grimalkin. To cure toothache, that pain straight from the Devil, Ode Magic would take a live mole from a trap, cut off its paws before it was dead, exhort folk to wear them on a chain, around their necks. A mouse fried in butter, cured a child of whooping cough. Warts vanished when Ode Magic rubbed them with a hanged man’s hand. Mumps, shingles, rheumatism – Ode Magic cured common ailments with a handful of nettles, a starving pigeon held to the throat, blood drawn from the tip of a black malkin’s tail. To ease labour pain, she hired out a charmed stone, stolen from an eagle’s nest, Before long, Ode Magic’s fame spread. Known as ‘a wise woman’, she could now afford to move to a cottage in Hell Lane. The cottage had its own pigsty and well. It stood alone at the end of the lane, not a quarter of a mile from the Black Wagon colliery. Unsurprisingly, the colliery gaffer had heard of Ode Magic’s sorcery and decided to consult her, with a problem: the mystery of the disappearing candles. “Missus,” the gaffer said. “We’ve searched all of the blokes, ‘oo works the pit, but ower candles keep vanishin’. Can yow ‘elp?” Ode Magic said that the Devil was stealing the candles, but for the sum of ten gold guineas, she would dispense a charm. Once the gaffer had crossed her palm, Ode Magic first made various secret signs, and then told him what to do. As instructed, at midnight the gaffer and a gang of colliers went down to the deepest cavern in the pit, and settled themselves. After a long and weary vigil, they heard a strange scratching noise. The gaffer struck a match, raised the Bible in his right hand and the colliers started chanting the Lord’s Prayer, backwards. Several swore they could smell brimstone and sulphur but no demon appeared. More matches were lit, and as the black cavern illuminated, from the shadows scurried a swarm of greedy rats. In the corner lay a pile of gnawed wax. The rats had stolen the candles, not the Devil. At dawn the next morning, the crimson-faced gaffer hammered on the door of Ode Magic’s cottage, demanding back his guineas. But the canny old woman had vanished. The cottage was bare, except for a rickety rocking chair, a basket of apples, and curled up in front of the dying embers, a brindled cat. Jane Salmons Jane Salmons is from Stourbridge in the UK. She has a poetry pamphlet Enter GHOST (dancing girl press, 2022) and full poetry collection The Quiet Spy (Pindrop Press, 2022). Jane has stories published with MacQueen’s Quinterly, The Ekphrastic Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, and in Ad Hoc Fiction anthologies Dandelion Years and Flash Fiction Festival Five; and forthcoming in The Dribble Drabble Review. Her microfiction has been shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award and nominated for Best Microfiction 2023 and Best of the Net 2024. She won the Pokrass Prize at the Bath Flash Fiction Festival in 2022. www.janesalmonspoetry.co.uk Aubade The river is a ghost before the sun, haunting the land with a thick mist, holding back the slime of monsters who stir, cut fins against the surface Water gurgles over shallow-drowned stones, bleeds across the sharp shale, is strained by the skeletons of trees, feet still stuck in the shallows mud My boat slices through in glide, oars dipping into the black surface, pulling us upstream for landing, a river town still sleeping this morn, it’s life still hidden by the fog By sunlight, we will be provisioned, and fast on our way, if this ghost gives up her spirit, if the day burns it clear, But I am possessed by the half-light, alive to the beauty of shadows, dark on dark growing lighter with the hope of a new morning. Michael E. (Maik) Strosahl A Migrant Couple Picks Tomatoes Here my love, red as our blood, picked at height of its blossoming dense as flesh, juiced with water smelling as the sweet dirt in your hair as it tumbles, as it tumbles through my hands. Our pantry will fill with its paste and berry, sauce and pickles. Taken from baskets that see know no ending, only the weight of our work and scarlet season our ripe hands prove. How full we are when our eyes rest on these crates of plump tomatoes. The weathered hands that touched skin so tenderly to get this far and the occasional crush and bleed. Rebecca Surmount Rebecca Surmont lives in Minneapolis, MN and has worked as a movement artist, physical actor, dancer, and collaborative teaching artist throughout the Midwest. Her poems have been appeared in journals such as Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Trouvaille Review, The Ekphrastic Review, and Topical Poetry, Minneapolis’ Southwest Journal, and The Anthology Seasons by Trolley Car Press. She works as a leadership consultant and coach. The Watermelon Seller In mid-summer, he loaded the gear-grinding International with his striped melons and me and headed down the country roads near the patch to sell to those residing along the path. We rounded bends and curves in silence, he absorbed in the fields of corn drying from the summer heat and the several weeks’ want of rain, finally coming to a row of houses in the middle of nowhere where he stopped and exited the truck like one in leg irons. At the tailgate, he cut the mint-green, dark-striped melon with his pocketknife to demonstrate to potential buyers the fruit’s freshness as it burped into perfect hemispheres, revealing the lush, crisp meat of red or yellow melon from which he cut the heart and offered on the tip of the knife to the kids. The twenty-five cents dug from overhauls and aprons, plus the children’s smiles, was enough, enough to make my sober-hearted farmer-father happy. Jo Taylor Jo Taylor is a retired, 35-year English teacher from Georgia. Her favourite genre to teach high school students was poetry, and today she dedicates more time to writing it. In 2021, she self-published her first collection of poems, Strange Fire, and her second collection, Come Before Winter will be out early next year (Kelsay Books). She enjoys morning walks, playing with her two grandsons, and collecting and reading cookbooks. Sailing Away on Memory As long as memory lasts, I’ll continue to deconstruct that day – the onomatopoeic flap, flap, flap of the sail, crotchety buzz of the motor, laughter of the gulls as we headed out. I feel the wind tossing my hair, spindrift moisturizing my face. Not exactly a romantic day with his dad as skipper, but sailing on a calm sea with no sweater or sweaty weather came close to paradise. Silly teen that I was, I expected the magic to last. My first love threw me over. Alarie Tennille Alarie Tennille was a pioneer coed at the University of Virginia, where she earned her degree in English, Phi Beta Kappa key, and black belt in Feminism. Alarie received the first editor’s choice Fantastic Ekphrastic Award from The Ekphrastic Review, and in 2022, her latest book, Three A.M. at the Museum, was named Director’s Pick for the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art gift shop. Climbers 1. Tousled haired Lillian padded after Fletcher to see what he did next. “What are you doing now?” she asked. So curious for three. Fletcher gave her an indulgent smile, pruning shears in hand. “Cutting out dead wood, little girl,” he said. “I’m not little. Call me Lillian.” “I can do that,” he said with a laugh. “Or I could just call you Lil.” “Does it hurt them when you cut?” said Lillian. “I don’t suppose so, no. Cutting what’s not growing makes the roses grow better,” said Fletcher. “Oh,” said Lillian. “And stronger.” “Exactly,” said the gardener. “You’re a clever one.” “I know,” said Lillian and put her nose in a pink rose. “That’s not a fragrant one. Come take a look at this climber. Put your nose in that. But always check for bees. They may be working,” said Fletcher, “and not know you’re coming.” “Oh,” said Lillian and followed Fletcher’s lead. Stopped when he did, leaned, hovered and sniffed. She laughed as Fletcher’s scissors went ‘snip, snip. snip,’ avoiding thorns altogether. “I like the climbers best,” she said. By mid-June the rose garden was coming into its own. It had been planned and planted so as to succeed one another throughout summer into early fall. Splashes of color and fragrance abounded. Especially the old fashioned climbers white, pink, cream and apricot. Lillian’s mother arranged the roses herself in lovely cut glass vases. They decorated the house, even Lillian’s nursery. A perfect nook held a weighted vase with wands of roses and baby’s breath. II. Lillian’s bridal bouquet was a simple spray of her fragrant favorites. After their honeymoon in the Bahamas, she and husband Robert moved into her childhood home, aptly named, Garden Hill. “Aren’t we the lucky ones, Sweetheart?” said Robert. “Indeed we are,” Lillian said. “Garden Hill can hold us all!” A handsome three story brick house with black shutters, two acres of cultivated gardens with fruit trees, a swimming pond that substituted for ice skating in winter. Beyond that Fletcher’s cottage, a stone wall and wildflower meadow. III. Gray haired Fletcher was bent through the shoulders but in fit health otherwise. He never married. “Me, marry?” said Fletcher when Lillian was a teen-ager and working by his side. She’d become his unofficial gardening assistant. “I’m wed to Garden Hill. And you’ve become an excellent pruner.” “High praise, indeed,” she said. “I think that new yellow cultivar is going to be a stunner.” Fletcher, at 87, died peacefully in his sleep. It was full summer and the roses were at their peak. He left Lillian handwritten gardening journals full of snippets and drawings, all dated. They covered some forty years. How did he find the time? she wondered. Dear Fletcher. The journals were as valuable to her as the double stranded pearls Robert gave her on their 25th wedding anniversary. The sections on fragrant climbing roses were her favorite and most frequently read. Dog-eared actually. Revered and loved. Deborah Trowbridge Deborah writes flash, short stories and creative non-fiction in northwestern Montana. Most recently her work has been published in Fifty-Word Stories, "Bees," in March, and "My Papa, the Poet," in July. Her flash, "M. Binet," is forthcoming in print this fall in San Fedele Press' American Writers Review 2023. sleepy hollow not the stuff of headless horsemen commanding the evening pathways; dark ambiguity but the day’s offering the commerce of industry melded with pastoral hues; land rising and falling to showcase sweeping beauty Cristy Watson Cristy Watson is an award-winning novelist who loves to enter writing contests. She has poetry published in CV2 Magazine, Worth More Standing (Caitlin Press, 2022) and The Poetry Marathon Anthology (2019-2023). Having resided in Surrey, BC for years, she currently lives with her sister in Calgary, Alberta and continues to volunteer with the Surrey International Writer’s Conference. She will be presenting a poetry workshop at the Write on Bowen Festival of Readers and Writers in September. 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 Bowie Wall, by Jimmy C. Deadline is September 1, 2023. We are delighted to have Kate Copeland as our guest editor again! 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 JIMMY C. 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, September 1, 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. Figure 8 Revolution With the right pen you find your voice and the notion of what’s love can be drawn in the sand with a stick. Your song moves me across the dunes at night and I draw a figure 8 in the sand before the fire. In time poetry takes place and watching the sunrise over coffee becomes a poem going up the side of the day. The 8 in the sand is still traceable for now. An ant crawls across the stick. Encounters another. They bow to each other in greeting. We smile in the golden light, good morning. Guy Biederman Guy Biederman is the author of Translated From The Original, one-inch punch fiction (Nomadic Press), Nova Nights poetry (Nomadic Press), Edible Grace, lyrical micro prose (KYSO Flash)) and three other collections of short work. A former peace corps volunteer (Guatemala ’81-’82), gardener, publisher, and creative writing instructor, Guy lives on a houseboat in Sausalito California, hosts floating word jams, and walks the planks daily. ** Disguised Self Creeps along a dark drooping tail unto its green beady eyes- breathing silence behind my silhouette. In wake for the veils to flutter, gently wave rhythm of colours onto the white georgette- pink, yellow, orange from far end of darkness. Little patches of red are shared by the dancing girls, golden tiaras and long necklaces. On a cold night open to sky, crouched memories spring to music, roses warm among the dead pretending to be life. 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. ** The Garden of Beautiful Things The artists, saying: which unexplains-- that unknowingly so-- bound simply by where the mirror takes it. And this, they said, In a grumble office, fantasizing of tread cloth that might emulate sun breaking. For sigh, testimony, more truths-- though none would claim the religiosity needed. Yet needed, lands vivid and ripe, long alp and straddled flume, laid out to the people vibrant, naked only in in their disproof of angst and couldn’t-be. Robert Henry Robert is a college student hoping to take his pen along the way. ** Homage to Nina Simone Goddam, miss a hippy & your shot will go all the way to Baltimore where the sinnerman sits in his colourful stew, cradling the Bill of Rights, whose brother, the Bill of Wrongs, with his golden hair the true length of their love, has left for the north of Europe where they paint with their souls, staining canvasses in history’s hues, black blood mixed in the toothy bite of little girl blue standing in the pink, left lonely in the Rue Rabelais where the devil sits sniggering in his Citroen, strange fruit hanging from his twisted mouth, white lipped & lusting after the long armed angels back in Philadelphia, you gotta sing for your supper in Atlantic City to be canonised the patron saint of rebellion, the German Shepherds are howling in Carnegie Hall, Baching at the colour of your skin, the sergeant stashes the cash beneath the bleeding fountains in the yard, climb, climb the piano & hang from the lilac tree screaming for your people, your purpose, your peace of mind, birds flying high, past all disappointment singing their show tune for all the ladies in the country of lies, lie down, take your medication & turn off the television, all the babies are cared for before they are born & your mothers keep whispering their prayers in the back of the police car, the handcuffs no hindrance to their rosary wringing, learn how to hide those tears, they’re no good for watering this pale land, if you wanna live in the palace its yessir yessir yessir, the raindrops will fall & it’s nobody’s fault but yours Simon Parker is a London based writer, performer and teacher. His work been published in The Ekphrastic Review and has been performed at the Lyric Hammersmith Studio, Hackney Empire Studio, The Place, Somerset House, Half Moon Theatre, Southbank Centre, the Totally Thames Festival, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Simon is an associate artist of Vocal Point Theatre, a theatre company dedicated to telling stories from those not often heard, and providing workshops for the marginalised. He runs creative writing and reading groups for the homeless, socially excluded and vulnerable. If you want to know more go to https://www.simonparkerwriter.com ** Indelible Moments These burning skies overhead draped in the scattering light of motley bubbles shadow a nimble jamboree of voices youthful and ripe rejoicing nearby the murmuring creek frolicking in the leafy shades their nakedness laid bare in a verdant meadow carefree about the world shading that which hides their flaws revealing the naiveté of their childish nature vulnerability in its purest form unmasked, for all to see awaiting the sun’s setting melody flushed in the colours of fall of crimson, amber and gold the mellow notes of guitar strings an undulating motion of their leisurely breaths evoking soothing contemplation about an indelible moment such as this impenitent in its distinctive nature reminding me of life’s transience as I hope to pencil in my legacy parietal art for posterity Like so many before me Andrea Damic Andrea Damic born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, lives and works in Sydney, Australia. She’s an amateur photographer and author of prose and poetry. She writes at night when everyone is asleep; when she lacks words to express herself, she uses photography to speak for her. She spends many an hour fiddling around with her website https://damicandrea.wordpress.com/ ** If I Were Nina Simone, This is What I Might Say Call me Eunice, for Nina is a lie. My father’s name is Divine, my mother’s Mary. Even so, and to my mother’s great disappointment, I was not the second coming. Just young, gifted, and Black. But by God, I could play the piano. The singing was just something I needed to do to earn a living. Funny, most people think of me as a singer, if they think of me at all. I hid who I was from my mother and my father, playing the devil’s music and living the devil’s life. I mean, I dwelt in Greenwich village – what did they expect? I even married Satan, though he looked like somebody else. Someone in a uniform. I suppose I hoped for order, but it just made things worse. Others followed. Some I loved, some I cursed; none helped me any more than he did. When I sing, I become Bach and Blue, for that is the tone of sadness. I spit bullets, I seduce. My songs are like my life, all over the place. I sing in search of a country, a new country. But in the end, I have no home. Do I succumb to the blues? Sometimes. Sometimes. That’s a truth. I sing sweet, I sing raging, and then I refuse to sing at all. How can I not turn blue with sadness, blue with anger, with all the colours that surround me? Wayne Garry Fife Wayne Garry Fife is an anthropologist and writer who lives in St. John’s on the island of Newfoundland in Canada. He writes micro fiction, flash fiction, short stories, memoir, novels, and non-fiction. His latest book, published by Palgrave Macmillan, is entitled Imaginary Worlds (Invitation to an Argument). ** To Match the World on Fire Red bodies chained to match the world on fire, predating our scorching summer. The origin of life, the in between. There is no amount of blue that may quell our haze, no amount of green that may bring us back To an original lie, to life, I meant to lie by a rock, scalding our backs. To lie by the banks of the river of fire, to lie. The three ages of Man replace the clouds, my eyes stray, strain itchy from the smoke around me. Air Quality Index 7, Severe Risk, my lungs wished to be those trees. Alveoli refuse to expand, even the guitar burns. Almost. Luciana Erregue-Sacchi Luciana Erregue-Sacchi is an Argentinian-Canadian art historian, poet, translator, editor, and award winning publisher (Laberinto Press) from amiskwaciwâskahikan (Treaty Six). Her creative-non-fiction has been longlisted for the Susan Crean Award. Her work has been published in Polyglot Magazine, Humber Literary Review (Canada), The Selkie (UK), Agni Magazine (US), and others. Luciana is a Banff Centre Literary Arts Alumni, 2019 Edmonton Arts Council Artist in Residence, and the WGA’s Horizons Writers Circle coordinator. Her debut chapbook titled Of Mothers and Madonnas(April 2023 through The Polyglot. Luciana loves walking everywhere, especially the Edmonton River Valley with her family and friends. ** Summertime Goddam “Summertime and the livin' is easy” bob painted his figures in all the colours for those who only saw Black & White knew eyes needed to really see magic figures, simple, symbols popping from the page more real than life moving, flowing in 3-d a fantasy of equality bob played his melodies mixing oils on the palette figures lithe as blue notes scatting across his canvas nina always the centre chanteuse adding her Goddam songs calling for change soul and sass and bad-ass rage I put a spell on you To be Young, Gifted and Black (nina and bob both knew) Feeling Good I wish I knew how it would feel to be free Backlash Blues Today is a killer Don't let me be misunderstood Ain’t Got No Life Let it be me The Desperate Ones Mississippi Goddam (and she meant every word of it) Emily Tee Note: the second half is a found poem using selected titles (with annotations) from “Nina Simone’s 20 greatest songs – ranked!" Alexis Petridis in The Guardian, 20 July 2023 Emily Tee writes poetry and flash fiction. She's had pieces published in The Ekphrastic Review Challenges, Aurum Review and elsewhere online, and in print in some publications by Dreich and other places. She lives in the UK. ** Homage to Nina Simone We had danced with abandon all through the night as though a spell had been cast on us. We were feelin’ good as streaks of morning colored the sky and we collapsed, exhausted and settled on the grass to enjoy our dejeuner sur l’herbe, a picnic someone had brought. And while we ate, we listened to the woman with the guitar singing the blues. Gretchen Fletcher Gretchen won the Poetry Society of America's Bright Lights/Big Verse competition and was projected on the Jumbotron while reading her winning poem in Times Square. One of her poems was choreographed and performed by dance companies in Palm Beach and San Francisco, and others appear in datebooks published in Chicago by Woman Made Gallery. Her poetry has been published in journals including The Chattahoochee Review, Inkwell, Pudding Magazine, Upstreet, Canada’s lichen, and online at Poetry Southeast, SeaStories, and prairiehome.publicradio. Her poems are also included in anthologies including Sincerely Elvis, You Are Here: New York Streets in Poetry, Proposing on the Brooklyn Bridge: Poems About Marriage and Capital BookFest’s Family Pictures, Poems and Photographs Celebrating Our Loved Ones. Gretchen has led writing workshops for Florida Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Library of Congress. Her chapbooks, That Severed Cord and The Scent of Oranges, were published by Finishing Line Press. ** Suzanne In the Morning She didn’t even plan to sing the Devil’s music for the crowd that gathered round To hear her warbly sound Her perfect pace an instrument tuned To honey silk unapologetically pure sugar sweet dagger sharp Suzanne In the morning To love Somebody Like Nina Simone High Priestess of soul Carolina contralto of equal rights Colour unspoiled by restraint You can listen today and it’s just the same Jessi Waugh Jessi Waugh lives at the Carolina coast with her husband and two boys. Her background is in science and education; her interests run all over the place. Jessi teaches yoga and writes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. She is having pieces published in Main Street Rag Literary Magazine, Sasee Magazine, moonShine review, and Last Stanza Poetry Jounral this year, among others. Find her online at www.reader-writer.com. ** Happening Electric colours rendered flat beneath the melding pastel sky; this young black, deconstructing art that’s old white for a hipper age, whose story, back, excluded hues. Thus dusky, husky sultry stage of bacchanal where lute is changed to strumming, groovy moody blues, of flesh, skin, simple idyl nudes, in Nina’s brew, sway. sinew swing. His riffing, shifting of techniques: they happened, all as Ginsberg primed, but barriers broken, abled vice, as burst, twist, stick, spill over, out to souls, mouths, eyes unscene before. ‘It’s just a feeling’ - homage thing, ‘you can describe’, but tell it, no. ‘But when it happens’, then ‘you know’ so ‘that’s what I by freedom, mean’; the Simone sermon, sane to see. He died as fast as he had lived, visceral pleasures, pains conjoined. To live in flesh so die there too; he’s disappointed, not surprised, no longer here; as he, so we. 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 published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com ** a spell fell over the people did not know they were the same, unclothed music made them sway and dance under the sky a spell made them one – music, earth a life celebration feeling good – people, all colours dawn of a new day Julie A. Dickson Julie A. Dickson has written poetry for most of her life, from memories, nature and prompts, having discovered Ekphrastic Poems, she was hooked! Her poetry appears in over 65 journals including Lothlorien, Misfit, Girl God and The Ekphrastic Review. She has served on two poetry boards and as guest editor on several journals. Her degree in Behavioral Science allows an interesting look into the nature of people. ** Atomic Energy Black is the colour of my true love’s hair, he’s my brown eyed handsome man and I’m falling in love again (can’t help it). He’s funkier than a mosquito’s tweeter and it might as well be spring, blue in green, I’ve got a crush on you. Lush life in sentimental mood, oh blackbird, light my fire, let it be me, won’t you dream a little dream of me? Turn turn turn my cotton-eyed Joe, give me lilac wine, fine and mellow. Brown baby, you go to my head. My funny valentine, you’d be so nice to come home to, why not take my hand, precious lord? Be my husband. Wild is the wind, but here comes the sun, I’m your little girl blue and I’m feeling good, I’m falling in love again (can’t help it). Helen Freeman Helen loves trying her hand at the prompts on The Ekphrastic Review. She also enjoys Nina Simone’s songs. She has poems published on various sites and magazines and currently lives in Durham, England. Instagram @chemchemi.hf ** frozen tears northern firs bear strange fruit blood on the needles blood on the snow our indigenous women our indigenous girls missing murdered Donna-Lee Smith (with a nod to Abel Meeropol's haunting lyrics) Donna-Lee Smith had the privilege to teach writing courses in First Nations and Inuit communities during her 25-year tenure with McGill University. Her students' laughter and innate story-telling gifts made every session pure pleasure. She learned more about life from her students than they ever learned about writing from her (she often told them this and they laughingly agreed!) Tragically, heartrendingly, inconceivably, there are over 4,000 missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) across Canada. ** To Bob Thompson Regarding Homage to Nina Simone Your vibrant colours sing the praise of melancholy and malaise as tapestry of sea and shore becoming vivid metaphor -- the shards of shattered dream embraced as window stained that courage graced with disadvantaged discontent unbowed, unwilling to relent, and persevering to profess defiance of undue duress, clinging to unrest as gleam that glistened as her self-esteem in music letting jazz infuse Bach and gospel, soul, and blues. 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. ** Genitive Case At last! Re-dressed! Re-dreamed! Why it took them so long to leave Le Dejeuner Sur L’herbe and realize how ridiculously they were mocked behind those cravats, jackets and old verbal rag against her dazzling nude rebellious act? At last, they changed their minds, and redressed, I mean – undressed, in accordance to her vanguard stance, their long-imprisoned bodies raising red with anger for being so rudely misaligned with her exposed spellbinding vibe. No more. Here they come in matching demeanor happy to correct their interactive miss-manner, yet, instantly dashing all hopes, arriving at a splitting point: just as Manet couldn’t stop their chat, so Thompson couldn’t control their argument: - It must be to the left - one pointed. - No, to the right - another objected. - Aside! - Above! Red fingers firing a quest in a-la-Matisse dense color forest for the best setting of the new rebel muse, towering over her as over a threaten nest, missing to realize that resonance was not a matter of spatial precision, but of her whisky-soaked vibrato expansion. Pointers heat up until the brawl brims out of Thompson’s hand, and tumbles in Poussin’s Bacchanalia scene, where, as by the artist’s memoir, they mingle with other rebels and soak some tips for cool interactive skills. From Thompson’s modern brush via Manet’s avant guarde twists, to Poussin’s notorious classics, reflecting color revolutionary Matisse, and bouncing back in style, is, indeed, Salon de Refuses’ grand tour with solemn soul-and-blues allure. At this point her deep timbre intones the soul’s love of the single note, and her sun-soaked bold bearings start slowly departing from Manet’s polished porcelain daring. Then she sits – yes, she is plain grounded, but on the opposite side of the canvas to keep in check the other’s syncopations, setting an audience inducing entanglement, while the sunny mass of her voice rolls the rhythm of the embodied blues until it emancipates her body language from her counterpart’s strain phrasing reaching a guttural arch with a deep ecstatic urge. Her liberal musings come across the viewer’s wonderings igniting a flash behind the scene, where it seems she had seen the light of her dream, hence - the melting source of her swinging resolve, outshining the porcelain anticipation stronghold. Her spirited vibrato raises a stout jazz turnaround, replacing chords works a turn of phrase: her inflamed fulfillment pitch over the other’s chilled expectation launch. (The two ends of a genitive change.) By that time, behind the scene, the fiery fighters are on their knees before the altar of her voice in the soul of souls, breathing and praying each single note as a resolve to each of their piled trials and tribulations – in and out of: hard days, nights, streets, centuries, boundaries, back of busses and audiences – fiery soul and blues outbursts, live, piled in the timbre of her sun-soaked man-refused voice… 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 her poems have featured repeatedly in the The Ekphrastic Review and its challenges. Her collection of poems Ekphrasticon is published by Europa Edizioni, 2021. ** All on That Day (for Nina Simone) Oh, sinnerman, where you gonna run to? Sinnerman where you gonna run to? Where you gonna run to? All on that day --traditional, African American unlimited this landscape as it echoes oh and oh again-- the essences naked, footsteps spiral bleeding red earth footsteps voices naked with dancing fire levitating the sinnerman entangled with the river river overflowing fire through the body of the sinnerman filled with the who and the what and the nowhere to go nowhere to go at all but to the devil waiting within the sum of all the opposites patched together from the opposing forces of toolate prayers that add up to nothing but please please please begging for mercy crying please and begging from the threshold of confession riding the currents of reluctant regret keep digging deeper past regret beyond confession beyond words beyond silence beyond hope beyond the unforgiving past of actions speaking too loud running through the labyrinthine lies filled with excuses excuses you have integrated into the stories you left hanging in the fragments of the wild wind the fragmented words that drown inside the whirlwind that is the power, the Power of Creation the power that questions every foolish footstep every hunger fulfilled with endless useless desires hunger that ought to be filled instead with prayer echoing oh into being--a landscape all the colours of amen 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/. ** A VIEW OF HEAVEN, GODDAMN "EVERYBODY" sang Nina "knows about MISSISSIPPI, GODDAMN" everybody knew the suppression of black folks voting the murder of CIVIL RIGHTS WORKERS for registering people for a basic HUMAN RIGHT EVERYBODY, EVERYBODY knew; who knew about this world of people EVERYBODY with skin so hauntingly bright unashamed NAKEDNESS REDS and BLUE a YELLOW woman kids with BLUE hair and some WHITE folks too; a world void of shadows, skin color so EQUAL, the sky is evolved into opaque swirls never seen this side of HEAVEN where lolling in the ORANGE grass listening to guitar, without FEAR means KNOWING, EACH and EVERYONE what it is TO BE FREE, and NINA'S surrogate PURPLE body hair piled AFRICAN GODDESS high comes prancing in to observe this KINGLY DREAM, while FUTURITY it may well be, she's put a SPELL on EVERYTHING. Daniel Brown Daniel Brown has just published at age 72 his first collection FAMILY PORTRAITS IN VERSE and Other Illustrated Poems published by Epigraph Books. He has most recently been published in Jerry Jazz Musician and Chronogram Magazine and has been included in Arts Mid-Hudson gallery presentation Poets Respond To Art in Poughkeepsie, NY. 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 Red Circle on Black, by Jiro Yoshihara. Deadline is August 18, 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 YOSHIHARA 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, August 18, 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. The Ekphrastic Review says a big congratulations to Kimberly Hall, whose poem, "Three Symphonic Sketches" has won the Water contest! Thank you to Kimberly and to all of the wonderful finalists below, and to every single one of you writing to these curated thematic collections. I am especially thankful to Sandi Stromberg for her time and consideration and for this important work. All of the reading for this contest was done blind. So we were surprised by the results after deliberations. Several finalists had more than one work in the top 20. The winner, Kimberly Hall, had three! Also surprising was how many of the finalists wrote to the same work of art. There were 50 choices to write about, but so many great pieces after the famous Great Wave painting, Klee's painting, the moonlight on water work by Henry, and my own abstract work, A River Without Water. While a wide variety of the works showed up in the entries, a few inspired many to write wondrous things. The finalists' works are shown below in alphabetical order by name, with Kimberly's winning poem first in the sequence. We thank each and every one of you for reading these writers, for sending your submissions, for supporting the journal, and for making this community so amazing. THANK YOU. Lorette ** Congratulations to everyone who entered the Water contest, and of course, to the finalists and the winner. I loved immersing myself in the myriad responses. I read each and every piece several times with appreciation for each writer’s thoughtful and compelling work. Then, I faced the challenge of making selections. Kimberly Hall’s “Three Symphonic Sketches” rose to the top for her ability to capture the symphonic sound of Hokusai’s Great Wave. But please read all the selections presented here. Each one invites us to experience more deeply the chosen work of art. Sandi Stromberg ** The Finalists The World to Come, by Valerie Bacharach The Catch, by Lizzie Ballagher The Glasgow Boy Speaks, by Lizzie Ballagher Icons, by Portly Bard A River Without Water, by Portly Bard What my glass-half-empty eyes see…by Dorothy Burrows Rain God Vessel Lamentation, by Helen Freeman Nightfruit, by Julia Griffin Haibun on A River Without Water, by Kimberly Hall Portents: Haiku, by Kimberly Hall Three Symphonic Sketches, by Kimberly Hall (First Place Winner) The Shadows, by Amy Holman Eddystone Lighthouse, by Anton Melbye (Denmark) 1846, by Sue Mackrell Canticle of Dreams, by Mary McCarthy A glass of words from the kitchen tap, by Sandra Noel What the wind knows, by Sandra Noel The Mariana Trench, by Barbara Ponomareff the river's slow face, by Janet Ruth Writing with Hokusai, by Janet Ruth Final Sky, by F.F. Teague First Place Winner!!!! Three Symphonic Sketches In 1905, composer Claude Debussy requested that the image of Hokusai’s Kanagawa-oki Nami Ura be printed on the front cover of the published score of his newest orchestral work, titled La mer; Debussy kept a copy of this artwork in his studio, and used it as inspiration. I. First, a wash of colour. Shimmering harps and strings like sunlight soar high above the waves, bass and bass drum rolling steady beneath them. Chords and motifs dissolve into a soundscape of blue – brisk blue wind over bubbling blue water, light flutes and dark bassoons and boundless rippling cellos – all watercolour and ocean spray, blossoming against the horizon. a cloudy spring haze – seawater and sunrise meet, claws crest and retract II. Second, the scherzo. Not just colour, but movement. A strange and glittering dance with ever-changing steps. Phrases seem to shape themselves – texture and timbre toss each other in and out of earshot, with a sort of playfulness that cares not whether it leads its listener to familiar shores or into unfamiliar depths. foam like dragons’ pearls, dancing on the waves – waves that scatter boats like fish III. Finally, the storm. Horns and trumpets, rumbling first and then growing, growing, as a growl grows into a roar. Wind and bass and brass and strings – the whole orchestra strengthening into a swell, swelling into a surge – surging into a thunderous chorale that reaches up through the mouth of a distant sea and brings the great wave to life. the sea-god wakes, and between its curls – the dawn’s first glimpse of Mount Fuji Kimberly Hall Kimberly Hall (she/her) is a queer and neuro-divergent poet and writer. She received her master's degree in behavioral science from the University of Houston-Clear Lake. Her poetry and prose can be found in online publications such as First Flight, Sappho's Torque, and Equinox, as well as in several ekphrastic poetry anthologies and a brand new anthology from Mutabilis Press. She still gets the idiomatic butterflies whenever anyone mentions these things where she can hear them. The World to Come An imperious galaxy holds multitudes. A clock ticks past and future as gold and cobalt fish swim in random patterns of here and gone, return and leave. See the mother with her two faces, heart-shaped mouth when she remembered love, the other all blank eye and shuttered lips. A vermillion fish, nostalgic for its beginning, glimmers. The clock ticks star and planet while flowers sprout in scented water, spread their leaves and petals. See the mother’s upraised hand, empty of names. The moon eats the sun, the clock spins eternity, fish dazzle in the darkening sea. Valerie Bacharach Valerie Bacharach is a proud member of Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops. Her writing has appeared or will appear in publications including Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Pittsburgh Quarterly, The Tishman Review, Topology Magazine, Poetica, The Ekphrastic Review, Talking/Writing, and Vox Viola. Her chapbook, Fireweed, was published in August 2018 by Main Street Rag. The Catch Hungry, still, for solitude, he sent us off across the lake ahead of him: went aside alone, this time, to meet with God, his Father. Reluctantly, we rowed away, hauled, heaved against the growing surge of angry waves that sent us floundering, spinning, helpless on the disfigured face of Galilee’s wide water. We tasted terror then, tormented by the force of wind that clenched our innards, pitched us into Sheol’s deeps, dashed us down the crags of water into the gnashing teeth of a storm. Now: how in a towering tide & torrent were we to fare without our Lord? The mast curved over, sang out, whined. Our puny rudder failed. The sail sprang out & snapped, tore, flashed away into a squalling wind until we bawled in fear of death, shouted, eyes shoreward, that we saw an apparition. And yet, no phantom it was but Christ himself in very flesh walking the rage & roar of wave-crests, holding wide his all-embracing arms to clip & keep us in. No catch of fish more dear to him! We understood at once he was the Everlasting One, He who then cried out to us: Cannot I who hurled stars across the void, who brooded over deep primeval waters-- cannot I, radiant over chasms of blue darkness, now walk across this wildness so to find you, call you home? Lizzie Ballagher In 2022, Ballagher was chosen as winner in Poetry on the Lake's formal category with a pantoum entitled ‘Across the Barle’. Her work has appeared in print and online on both sides of the Atlantic; it has also been presented in podcasts on Poetry Worth Hearing (Anchor fm). Several of her poems in the last two decades have, too, been set to music. Contributing regularly to Southeast Walker Magazine, she lives in the UK, writing a blog: https://lizzieballagherpoetry.wordpress.com/. The Glasgow Boy Speaks, 1887 River Landscape by Moonlight, George Henry, 1887) South o’ the border all the blether’s now aboot Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, while here in the North Countree men gang up long before the skreich o’ day tae drive haem rivets, slave at smelting lums along the Clyde-- and all tae keep her majesty in a style she is entitled tae (they say) with Sassenachs and swaggering lairds who think we’re teuchters-- gyte as the moon that sinks down tae the river-- clarty by our guid labours… Yet, open up your een, ye glaikit southren folk, and see the braw dance o’ light even in the scribble of an antic moon, the reek o’ blazing furnaces-- the heft o’ steel and coal; the sweat on backs o’ men bowed doon…. Here winter days are nae sae lang, so we mun keek wi’ inner een tae find the brilliance o’ bonny light in darkness. Lizzie Ballagher Glossary blether gossip, chat gang go skreich o’ day daybreak drive haem drive home lums chimneys Sassenachs the English teuchters rough characters gyte mad clarty dirty guid good een eyes glaikit gormless, empty-headed braw brave, beautiful nae sae lang short mun keek must look Icons These once the pride beneath the prow of storied wood from stern to bow are now but remnants left to gauge the wonder of their golden age when keels beneath the waterline would harness wind above the brine in timbered sails to brave the roar that souls defiant dared explore by going west to reach the east believing waters never ceased, that plane ordained they ought to fear was more illusion wrought by sphere and spirit by which they were led was more than merely figurehead. 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. River Without Water I see the bottom of a heart imagined as ravine where love is intermittent rain it always seems between and idle dreams are fragile shards that peek from coral sand as precious trove of treasured lore enduring close at hand yet better left where widely strewn, assembled unrestored, in art that gives them homage due, but leaves them unexplored, accepted as the arid pain where scars were etched...and will remain. 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. What my glass-half-empty eyes see… Upon an ink-blotched river, shimmering oil spills, patches and traces of chemical trash. A concrete walkway, cracked and lifeless; still harbouring the trunks of two dead trees. From old warehouse bones smart apartments, well-lit; but no brightness for the homeless. Against the urban skyline, from pyres of wrecked cars, a suffocation of thick smoke; the shiver of celestial sharks, their ghost-fins splashing in a boiling, rising ocean. A gigantic plastic orange, air-swept, bloated; bobbing uneaten above sick coral… the harvest moon. Dorothy Burrows Based in the United Kingdom, Dorothy Burrows enjoys writing flash fiction, poems and short plays. Her work has been published by various journals, including The Ekphrastic Review. For some years, she travelled to school on a ferry boat. Rain God Vessel Lamentation It’s this stance I’m forced to hold, my left knee aches, my right elbow too and I worry about the onset of arthritis. My moustache needs a trim, coyote headdress smells of squirrel, ringed eye openings skew my vision and a developing fracture surely spells trouble. They told me I’d be given a club and shield to supplement my four remaining fangs, but to say I’m gutted at their size is an understatement – almost like a watch and pen which would have been more use. Guess I’m not too sure why I need them. Nobody asks me what I want and aren’t I the god here anyway? Can someone please fill this water container or at least dampen me with mist and spritz me with dew? I long for clouds to subdue my surroundings like an arctic cloak and slick my cheeks with moisture. Mother of Jesus, tell them to fill me to the brim. Let me be drenched, overflowing, hailed by farmers and warriors, prophets and priests, parents and children the world over. Endue me, for pity’s sake, with even one drop of real power. Helen Freeman Helen Freeman started writing poetry during recovery time from a serious road traffic accident in Oman and got hooked. She has been published in several magazines and supplements including with Corbel Stone Press, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Clear Poetry, Algebra of Owls, Ground Poetry, Your One Phone-call, Open Mouse, Red River Review, Barren Magazine, The Drabble, Sukoon, Poems for Ephesians and The Ekphrastic Review. Some of her ekphrastic poems were published alongside related Diane Rendle paintings at an exhibition in Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh. She taught English for many years in Kenya, Tanzania, Oman and Dubai and now lives in Durham, England. Nightfruit So the bright orange Scribbles itself by night Into the deep blue: Beauty of Seville, Framed as a secret Spanish Exclamation point¡ Julia Griffin Julia Griffin lives in South-East Georgia. She has published in Light, Lighten Up Online, Snakeskin, and some other magazines. Haibun on A River Without Water Dry wind carries no water across these still beds. What was once bright and fertile now hears only the echo of rain, holds only the memory of flood. Scraps emerge like phantoms in the night. Feet splashing, a wet rush of blood, ripples and riptides and roaring thunder – shadows, sluggishly crawling out from darkened desert, coming to rest against eager palms. Scraps, like phantoms, dissolve once more, crumbling to dust in the hot white light of day. no thirst is quenched by memory alone – where dreams run instead of rivers. Kimberly Hall Portents: Haiku morning overcast – clouds like honeycomb, now sweet, hold tomorrow’s storms Kimberly Hall The Shadows It’s raining bullets in 1941, and the seamstress whores are waving white handkerchiefs in a chiaroscuro of recruitment and sympathy. The machines are shielded from the commands for pleats and A-lines, fitted; a waste. The seamstresses are lonely, Surrendering their men to Franco Amy Holman Amy Holman is a poet, literary consultant and artist. The author of five poetry books, including the prizewinning chapbook, Wait for Me, I’m Gone, from Dream Horse Press, and the collection, Wrens Fly Through This Opened Window, from Somondoco Press, her poems have recently appeared in The 5-2: Crime Poetry Weekly, The Chiron Review, and The Night Heron Barks. Eddystone Lighthouse by Anton Melbye (Denmark) 1846 Sue Mackrell Author's note: Words in italics are from contemporary sources. Sue Mackrell lives in Leicestershire, UK. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Loughborough University. Retirement from teaching and facilitating Creative Writing workshops gives her more time to write. Her poems have been published several times in The Ekphrastic Review and Agenda, also recently in Bloody Amazing (Dragon Yaffle) Diversifly (Fair Acre Press) Whirlagust III (Yaffle) and online in Words for the Wild. Canticle of Dreams Like a fist unclenched a leaf falling the balance of attention lapsed I slide wordlessly down past the surface into the dark ocean of sleep where bright fish rise finned and scaled the shimmering glint of sequins winking in glittering spangles that catch whatever light shines through the water my dreams fantastical and strange as their ancient shapes whispering without sound like liquid hieroglyphs antiphon to the long songs of whales that fill me with a desperate longing to stay here with them and learn to breathe without air 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, the Blue Heron Review, and Verse Virtual. Her collection How to Become Invisible will come out from Kelsay early next year. A glass of words from the kitchen tap I hold its story in my mouth, just long enough for the taste of clean to paddle on my tongue, to hear the echo of pins-and-needle rain. A hint of salt swaddles my throat, tells of another latitude, a time before your dark. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I go to the tap to refill your glass; it remains full of wordless words, empty. Sandra Noel Sandra Noel is a poet from Jersey, Channel Islands. She enjoys writing about the ordinary in unusual ways, nature themes and her passion for sea swimming weaving through many of her poems. Sandra has poems featured online and in print magazines and anthologies. This year she has been longlisted by Mslexia Women’s Poetry Competition 2023, highly commended in The Yaffle Press Competition 2023, and commended in Poetry on the Lake’s Haiku competition 2023. Two of her poems are currently on the buses in Guernsey as winners in the Guernsey International Poetry Competition 2022. Sandra is working on her first collection. What the wind knows Even when the sea is turning inside out, and the ferry lurches green folk starboard, the bottle on the table knows how to hold the wine in the shape of itself; in the way a shadow holds the shape of the wave just long enough, until it crashes back to itself, and the boat lurches port side. Sandra Noel The Mariana Trench He dreamed himself through layers of dark, all smudge and pitch-black night penetrating the earth’s mantle in search of its core, he fell deeper and darker past trees, houses, the clock on the tower which faded as he passed dream-memories shapeshifted objects into pure form as if creating road signs to nowhere memories of gardens – flowers, leaf, petal and stem, some formed like the rays of the sun turned into symbols of loss. Only the fish, magical and singular, appeared to know where they were going as if connected by a sizzling current. Aglow, as if lit from inside by lanterns carried in children’s hands. Onward his body drifted amongst the shapes, weightless and heavy at once. Imagining his own phosphorescence, he sunk deeper and darker through time and space out of the known. Over 11,000 meters deep – to a depth even his dreams could not fathom. Barbara Ponomareff Barbara Ponomareff lives in southern Ontario, Canada. By profession a child psychotherapist, she has been fortunate to be able to pursue her lifelong interest in literature, art and psychology since her retirement. The first of her two novellas, dealt with a possible life of the painter J.S. Chardin. Her short stories, memoirs and poetry have appeared in Descant, (EX)cite, Precipice and various other literary magazines and anthologies. She has contributed to The Ekphrastic Review on numerous occasions and was delighted to win one of their flash story contests. the river’s slow face kingfisher cackles from the shadows seeing with ears eyes seek the river’s waking her face turned away view of sky painted pink with dawn just her reflections rosy dreams of cherry blossoms falling drift of mist a glimpse where mist pulls thin dark waters scribbled on river surface a few reeds a slight breeze dabbles at the stillness lifting Janet Ruth Janet Ruth is a NM ornithologist. Her writing focuses on connections to the natural world. She has recent poems in Oddball Magazine, Tulip Tree Review, The Ocotillo Review, Sin Fronteras, Spiral Orb and anthologies including Moving Images: poetry inspired by film (Before Your Quiet Eyes Publication, 2021) and New Mexico Remembers 9/11 (Artemesia Publishing, 2020). Her first book,Feathered Dreams: celebrating birds in poems, stories & images (Mercury HeartLink, 2018) was a Finalist for the 2018 NM/AZ Book Awards. https://redstartsandravens.com/janets-poetry/ Writing with Hokusai tallest mountain a matter of perspective my fragile boat the wave crashes down truth worse than my fears bending prows into the bite of wind bending to fate should I pray or laugh into the howling? salt crusts my face Mt. Fuji diminished below sky full of ash foam reaches like fingers at the wave’s crest all that lies beneath Janet Ruth Final Sky He found her there at sunrise, on the beach, first sighting her from cliffs above the shore, one arm extended – not, though, in a reach, but as the tide had swept her from the floor of churning ocean. For a while he stood and told himself she hadn’t drowned; she slept, that’s all. She’d wake, recovered, and they would be happy once again. And then he wept and fell upon the sand and beat his fists upon the sodden grains and shells and stones amidst the early morning milling mists that struck their clammy chills within his bones. And still the sun rose in that final sky as he strode out to sea, resolved to die. F.F. Teague F.F. Teague (Fliss) is a copyeditor/copywriter by day and a poet/composer come nightfall. She lives in Pittville, a suburb of Cheltenham (UK). Her poetry features regularly in the Spotlight of The HyperTexts; she has also been published by The Mighty, Snakeskin, The Ekphrastic Review, The Dirigible Balloon, Pulsebeat, Lighten Up Online and a local Morris dancing group. Other interests include art, film, and photography. Landscape: Midnight Swim "You should avoid being too much in the real world, it isn't conducive to happiness... Does nothing of us last when we are dead? For the lucky ones, perhaps love." P.D. James, A Certain Justice How different the boat a lost smile on the water, faintly green in the moonlight. How different the single figure standing in the boat....embracing the wilderness. At a glance, she could be an animal -- long and thin -- a weasel or a stoat or an ermine standing upright on its back haunches its destiny, to be a royal collar in a Renaissance portrait. Looking for the light (a phantom moon slicing darkness) I now realize the solitary figure is a woman hands raised to hold up her hair from the nape of her naked neck. Her hair is dark, still wet though the water is a memory -- conflicted -- the clinging kelp like the whisper of lost love doubling the distance from the shore; then the boat, its fragile size and shape almost unable to support her weight as she takes her place briefly arching her slim body to recall their pleasure his hands sliding down the length of her as he told her what he wanted: to watch her swim, to become a part of the canvas before it demanded his full attention. And as his painting took shape did he feel her loneliness -- insatiable -- as he stripped all other life forms from the picture? They had been lovers; if painted together, sleek and entwined... But no. She is alone her skin like the sheer fabric of a night dress as if she'd stepped from his 4-poster bed instead of the grasses on a hidden shore. Will your palette float? she might have asked, eyeing the water and the caliginous colors he'd used to disguise any fires of incendiary passion. No Love, he'd answered, as if prescient we're eras away from an Age with styrofoam... Years later (ninety years to be exact) after modern art was liberated from Victorian convention would a great grand- daughter recognize the svelte, single figure standing in the boat as a part of her past? Or was the painting's message to be her future -- the oars that were unmoving -- bubble pools in the water indicating fish beneath the surface though they couldn't be identified; in the same way I wasn't identified, alone in Paris writing on the deck of a Dutch boat docked beneath the D'Orsay during a ferocious summer heat wave. Above, tourists with binoculars watched me from a balcony -- est-elle folle ou celebe? And inside, on the walls of the museum, a lone figure, framed, La Solitude -- art in the way Romantics dream of love, its lack, their wilderness. Although bright fish can't be seen in A Midnight Swim their scales shine like preliminary sketches in a spectrum of possibility. Even unconscious (and even unwritten) they are a wish and a promise: the inevitable dawn; the exquisite passion of an inextinguishable hunger as love begins to sizzle in an elemental skillet. Laurie Newendorp Laurie Newendorp lives and writes in Houston. Honoured multiple times by the Ekphrastic Challenge, she found Harrison's La Solitude to be reminiscent of a personal experience: in 1992, stranded in Paris during a heat wave, she stayed on a Dutch Bed & Breakfast boat, The Johanna, docked at the base of the Musee D'Orsay. Alone and struggling to finish a final academic paper (Yeats And The Tarot) necessary for a graduate degree in Creative Writing, she left the boat at night to find food; and to make trans-Atlantic calls to the father of her children. If asked why she continues to love him, after both divorce and his death, she might tell you one reason is that he accepted (and paid for) her nightly calls from Paris before she was able to return to Houston. Thomas Alexander Harrison is said to have created dreamscapes, which is why the atmosphere of La Solitude has a resonance with both "Landscape: Midnight Swim," and the ekphrastic poems in her book of poetry, When Dreams Were Poems, 2020. ** ripples morning fog the canoe slides into grey silence my paddle disturbs the bay the gulls are silent blue heron Egyptian statue among the reeds tide rises fog rests gently on shoulders and lashes bell buoy muffled benediction I am not alone Kat Dunlap Kat Dunlap grew up Norristown PA and now resides in Massachusetts where she is a member of the Tidepool Poets of Plymouth. She received a BA in English from Arcadia University and holds and MFA from Pacific University. She edited two college writing publications as well as the Tidepool Poets Annual. For many years she was Director of the National Writing Project site at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and is currently the co-owner of Writers Ink of MA. Her chapbook The Blue Bicycle is being prepared for an autumn launch. ** An Abandoned Plot holds a roof, rising bamboos guard empty spaces- drifting crumbs reach the fence where sits the crow in morning breeze. I gaze long at night sky until it begins to talk- until the letters dance in nooks of heaven. I anchor in clear waters- until the stars fall in slow drizzle. My breath in dying mist. 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. ** Woods and Waters This night is mine, and all around, the moon is calling me to come...to ride upon the light that kisses night within the earth’s deep moaning. The night is mine, and as I smile, eclipsing day and duty, it’s here I run to sail upon this lake of ebony and silken sun- less beauty of the night, my night.... Here, I am ruler of my realm as all alone I stand, and in the grand- ness of the starlight I am... I am...a traveler of sky and sea, ...of woods and waters. There is no you... nor they... nor us... in this wide world of night, as I stand seeing far away the light of day fast fading in the march of time. But here, each moment stills... to hush the rush and random shouts of mobs and gobs of powers’ red abuse. Here, I stand. Here I am...bare to wear fair sparkles of the night, my night, afloat on dreams of boundless blue where there is no you. L. W. Owen Linda Watson Owen is the Mississippi Poetry Society's 2023 Poet of the Year. Her book, A Gift of Dappled Light, is a compilation containing a variety of her award winning poems and favourites of readers and audiences. It is available through Amazon. ** Finding Solitude in Watery Silence The words are stagnant in my mind like the lily pad clad surface of the pond, and they curl into the shells of my ears and bury themselves in my flesh. A metaphorical parasite that can no longer vocalize, no longer bleed dry the murmurs and stories in the paper and whispers exchanged in ballrooms "She went out to swim at midnight and a fisherman found her body the next morning." An empty boat A sunken oar A discarded dressing gown I could feel the sloshing of the freshwater in my lungs and yet, I could still hear their whispers Still feel the cold, rough hands that pulled me into the boat and the scream that erupted from the old man's throat when he realized I was dead. I was dead. I was dead? The coroner only knew I had no pulse and yet, in the cellar of the morgue on the rusted table, he mumbled to himself about how this “young woman of high society” was found washed up on the bank, tall grasses tangling in my silken hair and mud painting my porcelain skin I had no bruises, no gashes, no strangulation marks, no skin underneath my fingernails. He didn't know if it was by my will or another's that I was no longer alive I didn’t know either. But after concluding my autopsy report and plucking the aquatic larvae from my body he wrapped my body and sent it off in a carriage to be buried and still I couldn’t open my lips to tell him about the maggots in my throat But this is where my memory refuses to fracture like glass and clear because I do not know why I now stand in my boat looking back at my reflection just as I had done nights previous and still remember nothing about who I was. Who I am? My name is a distant memory, this pond a place of my past and yet when the moon rises every night my ghost- the word they scream as they see my figure following the path to the cattails -wanders back to this boat because this small sapling of a lake was my only familiarity But now I see the moon's reflection sewn together across the water's surface with mine and for some reason, I want the moon to see my face more clearly so I hold back my damp hair and pray that the heavens won’t take my soul just yet because just at this very moment I have a new thought, "It truly is such a lovely night for a swim." Lily Wilson Lily Wilson, is a sophomore at the Alabama School of Fine Arts. She enjoys reading, gardening, hiking, photography and drinking excessive amounts of coffee in her free time. She hopes to work in forensic investigation and become a published poet/author when she is older. ** Solitude Blues I once loved a sweet soul her shadow looked like me I once loved a sweet, sweet soul his shadow looked like me We are lost here tonight, the truth we cannot see Who shall save us, You or me? Who shall save us, You or me? I shiver at what the answer might be. Under a full, full moon I hear the earth’s hum Under this bright, bright moon I hear the earth’s hum My heart she beats, yet my fingers are numb. Who shall save us, You or me? Who shall save us, You or me? We shiver at what the answer might be. We are naked and we are afraid We are buck-naked and we are afraid Lord, Lord, won’t you please come to our aid. Jeffrey G. Moss Jeffrey G. Moss was born and bred in Brooklyn, USA. After 32 years guiding 13/14 year olds in crafting their worlds he has finally started following some of his own writer’s advice. His work has appeared in Cagibi, Hunger Mountain Review, Under the Gum Tree, and Hippocampus. Find him on IG @jeffgm. ** The Full Moon Salon Without fail each month The gathering within the cave The wet echo of excited whispers Darkness and dankness Woollen blankets, candles Soft slurp of corks being pulled Candle flames appear like glow worms Tonight the ritual has run too long The wine has run too freely Pale flesh upon wool slumbering In the stillness before dawn I take the boat, find the air Clear, still, silent, deep Moonglow on my skin But you call my name A glow worm bobs at the cave mouth I row back to you Athena Law Athena Law lives in the lush Queensland hinterland (Australia) and her short fiction has been published by the Australian Writers Centre. She likes to tackle baking and gardening projects while she's mulling over the tricky plot points of her first novel. ** After an Afternoon at The World's Columbian Exposition She whistled “The Waltz of the Flowers,” low to weave her way down to the rowboat, as fireflies lit an ease in and out to the rhythm of her steps, her breath, the clear notes of Tchaikovsky. Moonrise, or the last setting sun’s rays catch stillness the moment before movement, the moment a pause before unheralded discovery, the shedding of everything else – the afternoon sun and dust, the latest melodies loud along the midways, the chill of ice cream, the screams of rocking at the top of the Ferris Wheel, the days’ clothes. Light body into flat calm, after this day of celebrating conquest: boats on the water to cross oceans of false discovery, voices recorded like astounding announcements to claim the air, signals of sound alongside her mother’s syllables of punctuated, “My goodness,” and “Well, I never….” Between the stanzas of her steady song, the moon rises above dense trees, the shoreline a dark mouth that will resist swallowing until she makes more of this moment of stasis, clean lines of skin against the cool air at the end of an August day. There’s time because it’s already been awhile since she let the oar drop into the water, balanced herself at the prow until the dark water absorbed her patience, the noise of all the rocking, as the dissipating waves escaped to the definition of wild shoreline. Hear her whistling to ease the waves to stillness. She is not Christopher Columbus, this slant of dusk light on still water no wonder of any new world. Her eyes fill with the ferris wheel, electricity, and the recorded sound of voices, and her mother all a whisper, “Look, honey,” “Listen,” and “Hold this,” sweet vanilla, cold in a waffle wrapped the better to carry and continue so much everything, no solitude, until a day can call it quits, level the earth back to the limited horizon and the bull frogs’ sudden quiet and her whistle lifting. Oh, to release the world of exposition, expectations, and so much wonder, so many wonders to ease out, lose the bank of world event and yammering delights, to stand still, the irony of painted solitude, before the arc of her naked lines that define the body that will break the surface. Michelle Holland Michelle Holland is currently the Poet-in-Residence for the Santa Fe Girls School and the treasurer of NM Literary Arts. She lives in Chimayo, where she gardens, writes poetry and creative non-fiction, and runs the trails from the BLM gate through the barrancas to Truchas. Her poems can be found in literary journals, in print and on the internet, as well as in a few anthologies. She has two book-length collections of poetry, Chaos Theory, Sin Fronteras Press, and The Sound a Raven Makes, Tres Chicas Press. ** Night Music Here is away, and here is home. There are no grasping fingers, no crushing blows-- no crushing blows, only the drumming of wings, the fiddle-plucks of notes in moonlight rills. The moonlight dances, alive-- it embraces me in song, an appoggiatura. An appoggiatura, the shimmer on water, a resolution broken by an owl shriek. The owl shrieks my name in welcome or warning. This is not solitude, only a space without men. I am on my small boat without gods or men, my body is bathed in moonbeams, and I dive. I dive, I dive, I dive, swimming in night music-- here is away, and here is home. Merril D. Smith Merril D. Smith lives in southern New Jersey. Her work has been published in poetry journals and anthologies, including Black Bough Poetry, Acropolis, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Storms, Fevers of the Mind, and Nightingale and Sparrow. Her full-length poetry collection, River Ghosts (Nightingale & Sparrow Press) was Black Bough Poetry’s December 2022 Book of the Month. Twitter: @merril_mds Instagram: mdsmithnj Blog: merrildsmith.org ** Born to Be Wild Believe in the wild before wildness. Speak from a boat. Speak when nudity saw shaded foliage dress the shoreline with a dark hem. Speak for her, elbows raised, hands wedged behind the head. Speak for tranquility, that surface speaks for adventure from a faintly tinted, red face. Believe in wild as a magic carpet ride, flying over sparrows, once a band who sang from a Canadian village buttoned with orchards and cider houses. Believe in gods who say you don’t have to celebrate clothing anymore. You don’t have to celebrate what’s in the closet. How to imagine bare skin is how to touch someone. He is seeking. Or seems lost. Or he is deciding where to land, believing lessons from epic trips that failed. Believe in running with the current, coming whatever way and feeling nature’s coolness as if drinking a truth serum. As if contemplation is a country. As if wind carries time. Believe in the wild before boarding the boat to cast off boring stories from before. Forget the past losses and happy endings, nature is love’s embrace. Whether he will return is hard to know. She likes a delicate wait, a sweet whisper before swallowing. 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 Naugatuck River Review, San Pedro River Review, and previous issues of The Ekphrastic Review. He has published two chapbooks (Pudding House Press) and three full-length collections of poems, including most recently from December, A Place Comfortable with Fire (Lamar University Literary Press). ** After All she could think of that moment was that Hemingway story—Nick Adams in that boat with his father, his father rowing away from the Indian camp. She wondered if Nick had heard the same screams, the same croaks of bullfrogs, the plops of startled turtles slipping off rotting logs—the same tremulous bird, its long white wings slapping the shallow water, chopping the air into shimmering ribbons. The sun would not come up over the hills, she was sure of it. But the stars had never been brighter. Late evening, standing at the bow, no one rowing, she felt quite sure no one was coming. Not her father. Not him. She could see the mouth of the river, the river that connected the lake to the ocean—but no signs of life on or under the water, nothing to swallow her. It was there and then she felt free, unpossessed, like that great egret vanishing. Robert E. Ray Robert E. Ray is a retired public servant. His poetry has been published by Rattle, Wild Roof Journal, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, and in five poetry anthologies. Robert is a graduate of Eastern Kentucky University. He resides in Georgia. ** At the Edge of the World I watch as you rise with wobbling knees and clutch your wrought head–a greasy knotted clump. A landless and barren sea slips into a chasm swallowing existence as your dingy drifts toward a silent, invisible edge. Panic swallows you like smoke suffocating one last breath till nothing remains. Darkness passes into pale off-gray light close your eyes and an insatiable off-white whale finds you. Do you sense the end? The silent end of the world where direction and time cease. But the oar–buoyant, glowing, pointed… Only take it! it is solid, it is real and light as wind. Take it! Please! Space crouches just beyond sight ushering you into some failing star millions of millions of miles from the nearest failing star. Samuel Schaefer Samuel writes poetry as a hobby, but he hopes to one day publish some of his work. He currently runs a poetry Substack called The Pony Express, where he publishes weekly, original poems. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida. ** Darkness Fell The world she knew behind a curtain of night. The silence swallows her pain. An occasional night fish breaks the water. Small waves lap against the thin hull of the boat. She feels the touch of the water through her bare feet. Her body responds like a Stradivarius to the touch of the bow. The shore an unwelcome memory. She tries to see the light breaking through a blackness that opens with reluctance, resists penetration. They said she’d find a way. The depths are willing to receive her. 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 twice nominated for a Pushcart. 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 MS is ‘in the oven’. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/ ** Alone (But Not Lonely) She couldn’t help but relish in the hazy dusk settling over the leafy canopies surrounding the river, the last vestiges of sunlight becoming obscured by a misty, gray overcast. Her naked figure, standing at the bow of her canoe, was clad in nothing but a soft smile. Arching as she threw her unruly auburn hair into a lopsided knot, her balance remained unchanged– which must have been the result of dozens of similar escapades onto the river. The sleek, wooden canoe, painted a faded baby blue, rocked gently back and forth in the placid waters. Its gentle curves and slender shape allowed for it to blend in harmoniously with the tranquil environment, but its oars seemed to glow in stark contrast amongst the depth of the glossy, black waters. Humming along to the creaking of the oars and the lyrical symphony of the buzzing cicadas, the lean figure said aloud, to nobody but herself, “It’s such a shame–the description of ‘alone’ inherently carries a negative burden, does it not?” Nobody answered. “I suppose, this may be because of its cunning daughter, ‘lonely’. But I am alone, and yet–I am not lonely.” She broke the silence again. “Oh, the joys of solitude!” Hannah Guo Hannah Guo, is a 15 year old rising junior in high school. She loves music, art, and literature, especially poetry. Her short story won the Platinum Award for Scholastic's National Art and Writing Contest. ** To Alexander Harrison Regarding Solitude As if entombed in darkened space you have her sense immortal grace -- becoming marble carved and left to world, though from her then bereft, that sees by haunting light of moon in eerie silence her lagoon and visage as a dawn foretold of solace newly taking hold where lull of glow and flickered gleam is fading dance of distant dream and blaze arising more direct commands her soul to resurrect the joy that cannot live in stone and oar that no one wields alone. 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. ** Adrift Green dinghy sits light on the still lake, so still I stand at the bow, inhale the heavy night air, stretch my achy back, flex stiff arms, and squeeze the pain from shoulders grown weary from rowing away, away from the noise and haloed lights of shore. I drift into the peaceful deep of darkest night alone, alone. Ann E. Wallace Ann E. Wallace is Poet Laureate of Jersey City, New Jersey. Her new poetry collection, Days of Grace and Silence: A Chronicle of COVID's Long Haul, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in February 2024. She is author of Counting by Sevens (Main Street Rag) and has published work in Huffington Post, Wordgathering, Halfway Down the Stairs, Snapdragon and many other journals. You can follow her online at AnnWallacePhD.com and on Instagram @annwallace409. ** Retired Goodbye crowd of need I have stopped, dropped my spirit oar into still water leaving you ripples of words left behind as guides to your hidden places no one can find me now I can stand in my own tallness look into my own dark trails eat stillness hear calling voices on my own delightful channels move my eyes toward shore only when and if I want to see your faces waiting for more of me Susan Shea Susan Shea a retired school psychologist who was raised in New York City and now lives in a forest in Pennsylvania. She had the privilege of working with children and families who struggled with disabilities and mental health concerns. A poet since third grade, Susan now feels like she is coming alive again in the free moments of time. She has been published in Plainsongs, Pudding, Poetry Forum Newsletter, Oxalis, The Orange Review, The Accordion Flyer, The Bluebird Word, and The Agape Review. Recently Susan has had poems accepted for four upcoming anthologies. ** Solitude True solitude is difficult. And yet, it flows freely across vast stillness, reluctant to draw hard and fast borders. I stand against the dark yawn of night, my boat a silver slant, a dim raft between water, shore, and sky. Leaves flung across sheets of glass over my moonlit image: its curvature illusory, variable, unknowable. My solitary posture bows, elusive to rest and towards the restlessness of night’s creatures. Elanur Eroglu Williams Elanur Eroglu Williams holds a B.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing, and a minor in Sustainability Studies from Concordia University Montreal. In addition, she has a M.Phil. in Children's Literature from Trinity College Dublin, and a M.S.Ed. in Reading/Writing/Literacy from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. She has worked as an elementary school teacher and educator, and is currently based in New York City. ** 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 Homage to Nina Simone, by Bob Thompson. Deadline is August 4, 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 THOMPSON 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, August 4, 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 Everyone, This intriguing artwork spoke just as loudly to so many of you, as it did to me. We received so many wonderful interpretations of this piece. Once again, it was a painful process selecting, and I'm so sorry to have left out so many fine submissions. I'm not surprised that this work inspired you. We can't help but enter into the painting immediately because as soon as we look at it, our mesmerising redhead is staring right back at us. Fioretti's sweeping dance of light and shadow shows us the others present, but like the men on both sides of her, we can't look away for long. The Ekphrastic Review turned eight this month. I just wanted to say thank you for making this ekphrastic adventure happen. We have created unimaginable wealth together, an enormous body of work on art of all kinds. We have looked at paintings and other creations from all over the world, contemplated them, and let them speak through us. We have created new worlds inspired by the imagination of artists and of each other. We have taken deep dives into themes in art, and we have gathered by Zoom to talk about amazing artists and to write together. Many of you have created collections of ekphrasis and published them, or sprinkled your books with ekphrastic morsels in between other poems and stories. We have become friends. We have become a family. Thank you all, and welcome to everyone who is stopping by for the first time. love, Lorette Art Deco Party Night When I think of us now I think of Art Deco Party Night. Whose idea was it to celebrate a past that thought it was the future? We dressed for it - like an antique photograph of fun: a flapper and her man in search of a charleston. We dined among the tiered skirts, rhinestones, cloche hats; drank gin from a silver teapot. Your beads swung low when you danced, and the jazz seemed to signify a lost idea of happy: the sort we inherited along with modernity. I still recall your eyes on your return to our table, kohl-lined and beautiful: they grabbed every photon in the room, and knew their own future. By the end of the night I knew it too, and it failed to contain me. Paul McDonald Paul McDonald taught at the University of Wolverhampton for twenty five years, where he ran the Creative Writing Programme before taking early retirement in 2019. He is the author of 20 books to date, which includes fiction, poetry and scholarship. His most recent poetry collection is 60 Poems (Greenwich Exchange Press, 2023) ** Paean to Phalaena You can’t help but see her in the centre flaming red, curve-lit, painted like a cinnabar moth. How she turns faces, but she’s pointing at you. Yes, you. She warns with toxic glow, brazen stance, screen of silk bling wings. Her markings and eyes hypnotise and if you cut her she’d bleed poison. Venom already flows through your veins like a thought stream and you know one kiss would be lethal, yet all you can think of is her magnetic fire. Helen Freeman Helen Freeman has been published on several sites such as Visual Verse, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Red River Review, Barren Magazine, The Drabble, Sukoon and The Ekphrastic Review. Her instagram page is @chemchemi.hf. She lives in Durham, England. ** Sí, Señor Sí, señor. Once again I fly close to your orbit in disgust and hunger. You think I’m captured but I won’t enter your smug vest in which you carry around vain attitudes and vacuous schemes. When I undo your supercilious bowtie later tonight, as always, I’ll imagine it being spun into a scarf that I can use to fasten your mouth. For the short time we’ll be together, I’ll restrain my tremendous urge to slide up to the chest of drawers in the hostal of your choice where a gas lamp pulsates, and I long to douse my translucent shawl until it catches and carries me away from you forever. Sharon Roseman Sharon Roseman writes poetry, non-fiction, and fiction. She’s a professor of anthropology at Memorial University in St. John’s, Canada and a keen admirer of visual art. Her poems and micro-fiction can be found in Poetica Magazine, CuiZine, and Found Polaroids. ** The Eyes of Anazit If you thought her name was Phalaena, you’d be wrong. Phalaena is his name. It’s his nickname, actually. Phalaena is a Greek word. It means whale, and he donned the name for the endearment it was meant to be when she used those eyes to seduce him. But that was several years ago. “Aye! Mi dulce y fuerte ballena,” she whispered in his ear, the first night of their love-making. Phalaena is every bit as prosperous in money and material assets as his girth suggests. Oh yes, he has charm, too, but Anazit was far more attracted to the charm of his bank account, and presently even that fails to engage her interest. Me? I’m a painter. You might say I am to Madrid what Toulouse-Lautrec was to Paris--a fly on the walls of café society, sketching out life in the moment. Tonight though, Phalaena and Anazit are of secondary importance to my eye. Tonight my every brush stroke serves to capture the incandescent glow of the brazier, its metal heated out of check. Do you see how its luminosity spills over the tea pot and tip-toes up Anazit’s arm; how it rests on her cheek then crawls into her red hair? How it softly flows through the folds of her cape draped over the chair? That brazier sheds its brilliance throughout the scene before me and causes me to trace it to the look of longing in the eyes of that gentleman at the table next. His own companion has turned away in delightful reunion with another. Those two women are heedless of the comforting heat being provided from Phalaena and Anazit’s table. Heat, yes—just enough to cause a modest burn to rest on Phalaena’s face, but heat too little to lessen the arch in his eyebrow and the suspicion in his eyes. Anazit has rallied every ounce of her ennui to posture herself for another. She rests her eyes on me. She is posing for me, oblivious to the fact the brazier is the point of my infatuation. I have to ask, would her eyes be as captivating without the play of the brazier’s glow? They would, indeed. They are the eyes of one who seeks, which is how she came to be called Anazit, short for anazititis, the Greek word for seeker. Little did her parents know though, upon the day of her baptism, that Anazit would grow up to be seriously short sighted. Karen FitzGerald Karen FitzGerald is a genre fluid writer whose works have been declined by some of America's most prestigious publishing houses. She is undaunted. ** "Emillie," aka “The Moth” Phalaena wasn’t her name, but rather a description of her body. Her visage, composed of taut muscle, long legs, and thin, wing-like arms had reminded some drunken, forgotten man of the Phylum Phalaena Moth. Now thumbtacked to this horrible moniker, she was forced to carry it. Moths are known to singe themselves to death flying too close to the flames of an open fire, and so the similarities continue: Emille’ has always sidled up close to that which threatened to destroy her, certain she had the upper hand. Her Grandmere’ used to say “Trop jeune pour savoir, trop vieux pour e’couter.” (Too young to know, too old to listen) Her eyes were also Lepidopteran, bulging disks of anxious pools that fairly jumped off of her face, a disturbance of coalescence, protubing like orbs foretelling a destiny which she loathes and yet seems powerless to change. Terrorized, Emillie’s eyes record no casual memories. Each day, she marks her calendar with a number: usually three, sometimes five, and on a lucky day, two. Today, this bloated, boozy homme de famille, (family man) this cochon, (pig) is number four. They were always the worst, those with wives and daughters, those with respectable jobs, pent-up anger pointing at her with half-mast swords. Oh! He was almost as ugly as she felt herself to be, with that despicable nickname, Phalaena, a genus of moth soon to be rendered obsolete. “What next” thought the moth, Flying too close to the flames As pretty fire danced. Debbie Walker-Lass Debbie Walker-Lass, (she/her) is a poet, collage artist, and writer living in Decatur, Georgia. Her work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Poetry Quarterly, Haikuniverse, The Light Ekphrastic and Natural Awakenings, Atlanta, among others. She has recently read live for The Poet’s Corner. Debbie loves beachcombing on Tybee Island and hanging out with her husband, Burt, and dog, Maddie. ** Over Cigarettes and Orujo Even if Spain had fought, he would’ve been too fat old and rich to fight. So, he bragged about his bull days, and how he’d been nearly gored twice in Pamplona. She knew it was a lie. He didn’t need to impress her; he’d paid her for the entire evening. This wasn’t the life any mother dreamed of for her daughter. “Anna, you will go to school,” her mother said over cigarettes and orujo. Her mother was dead but not what she’d said. When Anna told the man, he laughed aloud. They were both drunk, and he wanted nothing but her body. She couldn’t do it sober she told the painter; so, he paid the man what he’d paid her, and they left hours after. Rain fell from black clouds, and that caked black paint ran down her face-- moths vanishing in the gas-lit street lamps. “Always look up, Anna,” her mother said, but never directly into the light.” Robert E. Ray Robert E. Ray is a retired public servant. His poetry has been published by Rattle, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Wild Roof Journal, The Ekphrastic Review and in four poetry anthologies. Robert lives in coastal Georgia. ** You Can’t Always Get What You Want But you could talk to the blue-shadowed tablecloth and its red lamps bathing the evening glow. You could try to touch the woman’s arm, winglike, who is fatally attracted to fire. You could offer to pour her wine left in the bottle-- hopefully, not the troubled, passed-over sips of Spain. The gaze and graceful contours of a coterie. The glaze of look-up smiles and look-back glances. And if I could, I would act as the uninvited guest, which is not exactly acting, but pretending as a mysterious, swirling broth would from cabbage, turnips, and marrow bones while cooking cocido. A stock pot with cured meat ready for your purity. You could enjoy the clever, camouflage of a tuxedo—a suit flush of countershading—to look like a penguin, waterproofing feathers from a secret gland even though I know it’s hair oiled from a hidden bottle. You could forget that cologne face. You could dilate your eyes and not be escorted. You could find love, if not here, then as an embrace, gusts of awareness. Sing and pray. You can see towards heaven past the unfinished cathedral spires. You could try to unfasten her disorder. You can’t choose who sits at the table; her chair was the last available, or maybe you blundered in later. You can’t expect a teapot to pour. You can’t expect the sugar cubes to plop in the cup. The cigarette is a bad chimney. And if it’s troubling that more decades rumble by, you can still remember the dark brown fur of a moose roaming the thin, forest floor on an island in boyhood, and chocolate chips snuck from a crinkly bag when your mother wasn’t looking. That rock and roll song is burned into your skin, like your father’s voice, the semisweet, bluesy advice. You get what you need. The woman stares until she turns to you, her face aglow, she says: You wouldn’t understand. You know. You know before she flies away. 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 Naugatuck River Review, San Pedro River Review, and previous issues of The Ekphrastic Review. He has published two chapbooks (Pudding House Press) and three full-length collections of poems, including most recently, A Place Comfortable with Fire(Lamar University Literary Press). ** Hours After a Watermelon Sunrise This afternoon after leaving Hotel Regina, I plan a stop at Murillo Café for a late lunch. Outside under the cloth awning, I will order sesame crusted tuna which the server will deliver to a blue metal table where I am seated. Yesterday when I joined a guided tour at the Museo del Prado, intently studied Fioretti’s Phalasna, I tried to discern the reason for Madame’s annoyed expression, her martini glass almost empty, her cigarette still burning. While I stood mesmerized in front of that masterpiece, the museum guard stared attentively. I was unaffected by the scrutiny he was giving me as my mind played Ain’t Misbehavin’, that jazz hit of the Twenties, before I continued through the museum to observe other famous paintings by Greco, Goya and Rubens. Dr. Jim Brosnan Dr. Jim Brosnan’s first poetry and original photography collection, Nameless Roads, was traditionally published in 2019 (Moon Pie Press). He has had over 600 poems published in the United States, Ireland, Canada, Wales, India, Singapore, and the UK. Jim is a Pushcart nominee, a finalist in the Blue Light Chapbook Contest, and has won several awards in the National Federation of State Poetry Societies’ annual competitions, including a first place in 2021. Jim holds the rank of full professor in the English Department at Johnson & Wales University. drjimbrosnan.com ** I Dare You, Pretty Please I am the Ice Queen immune to the pins and pricks of your whimsical touch let me voodoo you with my torch Beware, would-be lover my fiery, frigid stare my raven eyes all aflicker like Icarus, your lust is my must Count to three, oh so slowly drawing in my finespun scent as I scatter smoke signals like Sirens yet be careful lest you choke Lean in a bit closer, dear and graze my pearly, lilac skin let my blood-orange inferno ignite your thirst from within Inhale deeply my bouquet, my love but not without a fee just try to dodge my silky lair I dare you, pretty please. Ann Marie Steele Ann Marie Steele, who resides in Charlotte, NC, America, is a writer who dabs in poetry, essays, and short stories. She holds a BS in Journalism (News-Editorial), and an MA in Secondary English Education. Although Ann Marie works as a high school English/Special Education teacher, she has a passion for writing poetry. She pens pieces about love and loss, and what she observes and experiences. The loss of her youngest son has deeply impacted her writing, which has been described as resiliently defiant. Having published more than 200 pieces on Medium.com, she was recently published in The Ekphrastic Review with her piece, “Every Lilly Donned with Grief.” When not writing or teaching, Ann Marie is an avid participant of Acro yoga aka Partner Acrobatics, where she can often be seen flying and hand-standing upside down just for kicks. ** False Attribution The lad’s soldier is marched out the door. The canvas is despatched. Prado! A Spanish flee. For, seeing the uninvited guest Concha’s contribution is censorious. And critical. Crucial. Crossroads warrant cross words. Are those fellows careless, carefree? Uncurating - present participle, supposedly unknown. Men canvassed are proved the majority view. Exhibitionism, as they exhibit women’s art. The latter (of course) fulfil their expected clichéd rôles - miniature decorators, seen fillers, scene as most chaps see them. Flighty moths of the night playing with fire? Are we observing how life has been and censuring ourselves? Are we observing how life has been but should censor ourselves? Who is careful? And what is fragile? Heterocera? Lepidoptera without butterfly wings? Or ego mindsets? Who should pull the cloth away and upend the table? To reiterate the past scenes more difficult than we thought, unless the iteration is reconfirmation. Phalaena - left over type, as classified. Collaborator, colluder, victim, survivor, at table with another uninvited guest? Not sharing a table. Who would want ruddy smoke in their eyes? Or see the mirrors already in other’s eyes? Pupils can be fast learners. False attribution is too easy by half. 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 published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com/ ** Indetermination She needs a plan should she decide to leave this scene no longer fun, this man who brought her here again, who let her long believe she could aspire to more than what she ought. Right now, she cannot even look at him, at anyone. How foolish she has been by acting moth-like on another’s whim, by serving as amusement now and then. He never will be more than what he is, base metal underneath a coat of gild. She holds a cigarette, not one of his; the empty glass beside her goes unfilled. She glowers since she wants to tip her chair, grab all belongings, head for some elsewhere. Jane Blanchard A native Virginian, Jane Blanchard lives and writes in Georgia. Her collections include Never Enough Already (2021) and Sooner or Later (2022). ** Moths at Midnight as jazz sways over decadent tables she holds my gaze, this painted lady wrapped in the drape and fold of wings nectar in glass, beads of possibility nestled in the scoop of her breast and shades of cyan bright in neon a man leans into the club cocoon his suited elbow angled in, eyes fixed on the splendid specimen centre right golden highlights in her hair, a glare transcending the flutter of moths winging the frame of femininity Kate Young Kate Young lives in England and enjoys writing poetry, painting and playing the guitar and ukulele. 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. ** Phalaena You think she’s looking at you, but she only sees the light reflected in your eyes; feels the moth’s attraction to the flame, expects it too will be the death of her. Thinks there are worse ways to go. Her protector has made yet another demand and she must decide how much more of herself she can afford to lose. The kohl collected below her lids─ how many times has he caused her to cry tonight? She stares at you as if you know, as if you are her last chance. It’s too intense, that look, and you blink back the image in your pupils of the moth singeing its wings in the fire. She shrugs and turns back to the man. The moth, its beauty seared the moment it swept into the spark, has an answer for her. Cheryl Snell Cheryl Snell's books include several poetry collections and the novels of her Bombay Trilogy. Her latest title is a series called Intricate Things in their Fringed Peripheries. Most recently her writing has appeared in Gone Lawn, Impspired, Necessary Fiction, Pure Slush, and other journals. A classical pianist, she lives in Maryland with her husband, a mathematical engineer. ** Phalena Torture listening to this boor. Boring beyond belief! Captain of all he surveys– or so he thinks. Arrogant ass. His disposition is like his cigar: difficult, smelly, entitled. He may buy champagne, but he will never own me. I am thin to his thick, wrapped in translucent wrap, drawn to the flame of drink, dining, music, dancing. If only he was not the reason I am here. Lynne Kemen Lynne Kemen lives in Upstate New York. Her chapbook, More Than a Handful was published in 2020. Her work is anthologized in Seeing Things (2020) and several others. She is published in Silver Birch Press, The Ravens Perch, Fresh Words Magazine, Spillwords, Topical Poetry, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and Blue Mountain Review. Lynne stands on the Board of Bright Hill Press. She is an editor for the Blue Mountain Review and a lifetime member of The Southern Collective Experience. Her book of poetry will be published in 2023 by SCE. ** poetic exiles on the voyage out you’re a mean ol lady funned jimmy joyce virgin woolf roosted beside him in the temple bar looking over la seine like swiggers caught in the net your words are lead woolf growled glazed with guilt confused like you they amuse & bore joyce groused i prefer blondes in rooms of their own making tosh woolf howled at a waxing moon knurled fingers caressing cane’s carved phalaena moth obsolete lepidoptera aliens from dublin & london bred & dead same month same year they two flutter over the waves to finnegans lighthouse leaving no room for jesus Donna-Lee Smith Donna-Lee Smith, way back when Earth was blue (not alage green) and TV black and white, had a most-loved prof at Concordia University (Montreal): Michael Brian, a Joycean scholar. While gorging on Joyce, D-LS fattened her studies to include Woolf and Atwood. Answer me this fellow lovers of the smitten word: Why has Atwood not received the Nobel??? ** The Stare Serious, seductive, sensuous. Faux fragility betrayed by a sapphire stare. The evening ambiance no longer infused with swollen indifference. Bathed in a central glow, the architectural arch of your arms is ready to envelop. Voracious vigour, tempting and teasing, clothed in diaphanous distraction. The challenge of your glare declares a delicate passion that solicits satisfaction. Time and again, it is said, the moth flies to the flame. I become another statistic. Enticed then ensnared by nocturnal charm, the hubbub becomes peripheral, and all else is rendered redundant. Henry Bladon Henry is a poet, writer and mental health essayist based in Somerset in the UK. He has appeared previously in The Ekphrastic Review. ** Blue Butterfly Captured and categorized as a trophy to wealth and control netted as a prize along with fancy restaurants and big cigars; her wings are more beautiful when spread released from the blue smoke and lechery she stares with unveiled freedom out of the frame toward the eyes of the artist who lifting an eyebrow nods toward the exit and fragrant valley orchids. Daniel Brown Daniel Brown began writing poetry as a senior and is especially interested in ekphrastic poems and those with musical themes. He's been published in a variety of journals, has hosted a Youtube channel titled Poetry From Shooks Pond and at age 72 published his first collection, Family Portraits In Verse. through Epigraph Books, Rhinebeck NY. He can be contacted at danandlinnea@aol.com. ** Night Phoenix They have a name for girls like her, a name that sounds like some dead and rotting thing in the gutter. The dead and rotting thing in the gutter once had wings, its feathers scattered by the wind. The wind of passing limousines scattered her gaudy feathers, spattered her painted face with mud. She caked the paint thick as mud to hide the dirt she felt the world must see, the dead eyes, because the world sees only dead eyes in girls like her, never the wings torn from magazines to escape a prison. If only wings of strass and gauze could change a world, beat high and bold, carry lost girls somewhere bright. All hearts with beating feather-wings belong in the shining blue. They have a name for girls like her, Phoenix birds. Jane Dougherty Jane Dougherty lives and works in southwest France. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems and stories have been published in magazines and journals including Ogham Stone, The Ekphrastic Review, Black Bough Poetry, ink sweat and tears, Gleam, Nightingale & Sparrow, Green Ink and Brilliant Flash Fiction. She blogs at https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/ Her poetry chapbooks, thicker than water and birds and other feathers were published in October and November 2020. |
Challenges
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