 Landscape, by John Wesley Hardrick (USA) c. 1930-1940 Gaea, Goddess of the Earth “When the well is dry, we will know the worth of water.” ~Benjamin Franklin Below the pastel parade the Chantilly cream of clouds the sheen of green softens beneath the yellow rustle of leaves. Near the dense blend of forest arboreal elders stand atop the rocks of ages shade the shoreline reflect buoyancy. Amidst the cascade of gifts Gaea sustains life itself– she offers us a glass of water day in and day out– goddess willing. Jeannie E. Roberts Jeannie E. Roberts is a poet, visual artist, and the author of nine books. Her latest full-length poetry collection is titled On a Clear Night, I Can Hear My Body Sing (Kelsay Books, 2025). From 2018 - 2026, she served as a poetry editor for Halfway Down the Stairs. She finds joy spending time outdoors and with loved ones. ** The Bridge A long ago At the dawn of Creation There was a bridge That unified the banks of the river That unified birth and death The Inhabitants who lived nearby Called this bridge Life Time The Time of life Over the unknown Over the emptiness Where all was possible Dreams have become reality Today the bridge is gone Only the will to live remains Only the Present Only a peaceful Landscape Jean Bourque Jean Bourque is from Montreal. ** Creative Vision In the half-open space between water and sky mist rises above old growth firs, the smell of green comes from everything, grassy banks, pinecones, conifer needles, nurse logs with unearthed bark, and with all these forest floor smells, I still want more. Spider webs spread low, dew catches sun’s light, fresh holds the morning. This could be a woodland dream, perhaps I slept too deep, but no, as sun hits water, fish feed, ripples appear. Round the bend ducks fly in, wings beat hard, sounds flutter, slap the air. Above the tree canopies elbowed wings carry a feathered belly with sooty stripes, keen eyes scan for silver and fins. Whether a vision, or a real scene, skin, bones, muscles and grace all rejoice in this wild place. Ursula McCabe Ursula McCabe sold wine in Portland, Oregon for many years. Her work can be seen in Piker Press, Oregon Poetry Association, The North Coast Squid, Bluebird Word, and The Ekphrastic Review. She likes the ocean, forests, lots of birds and shopping at thrift stores. ** Moving Like A River …comings and goings from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before us. William Stafford, "Ask Me" Light reassembles daily on branches overhung with river’s moods and birds like airy stones that skip across. Sky’s breath collects in clouds. Painter at home in his nest, brushes dipped in sungold. No place else to be, no race to be superior. No gatekeepers but his eye, his talent, skill. Nothing but esteem, exhibit awards for best of his people. Every day, watch the river propel itself, its own design and power moving past borders, flooding over banks even though confined. Lynn Axelrod Lynn Axelrod's work has appeared in various journals and outlets such as The Ekphrastic Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, Orchards Poetry Journal, California Quarterly; has been anthologized, most recently in Freedom Of New Beginnings: Poems of Witness And Vision; and was featured in the San Francisco Chronicle. Her work is in the James Joyce Library Special Collections, University College, Dublin. She is working on her third chapbook. ** Boreal Villanelle Sun pours molten into the lake. Loon bares its white heart. Its red eye. White pines lie down on the water and love themselves. Heron flies the shoreline in a blue cape. Chipping sparrow strikes its flint. Sun pours molten into the lake. Ruby-throat hummingbird: glowing embers. Yellow Swallowtail butterfly flits Star flower to Dandelion. White pines lie down on the water and love themselves. I dip my paddle, a spoon to my lips. Ventriloquist loon throws his voice. Sun pours molten into the lake. Cedars exhale. Moist breath on my face. The lake liquifies my heart. White pines lie down on the water and love themselves. Campfire smoulders. Its red eye. Osprey coasts on a hot thermal. Sun pours molten into the lake. White pines lie down on the water and love themselves. Kate Rogers Kate Rogers’ new poetry collection, Baba Yaga and the Girl Who Ate the Rope, is out now with Frontenac House. She won first prize in subTerrain Magazine’s Lush Triumphant Award for her five-poem suite, “My Mother’s House.” Kate’s work has appeared in Pinhole Poetry, The Windsor Review and World Literature Today, among other journals. ** The Truth About Lakes Don’t listen to what they say. A lake can be a blessing or a curse. Its waters reflect and absorb at the same time, produce and consume in like manner. Gaze upon it at your own risk, for what you see looks back. One of you is distorted. Look closely: The forest in the lake and the forest above it. The clouds. The sky. What is reflected is beyond reflection. A lake carries you into recesses of feeling, writes Wordsworth, otherwise impenetrable. Plath looked into it, hopeful at first, then dolefully. In me, says the lake, she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish. There is a haunting beauty here, and a beautiful haunting. I admire it from a distance, this bucolic scene. But I will not look into it. Don’t listen to what they say. Ron Wetherington Ron Wetherington is a retired professor of anthropology. He has published a novel, Kiva (Sunstone Press), and numerous short fiction, prose poems and literary essays. Read some of his work at https://www.rwetheri.com/ ** Billowing Billowing life is the essence-- Secrets concealed in its fold, Wild, unrestrained, and untold, Hide in its green opalescence. Billowing whiteness of heaven-- Breath from a passionate lung, Ever renewed, ever young-- Rises like luminous leaven. Under the surface, a riot, Raging in torrents unseen, Mirrors the white and the green-- Billowing, hidden and quiet. Iryna Hall Iryna Hall immigrated to the US from Ukraine in 1997. She is married, with three children, and lives in Utah. Iryna writes while managing multiple sclerosis. ** The Manifold Matrix The manifold matrix multiplies its magic, This way I hear the radius say each line of number is a prayer I pray. I follow the outline and trace the plot, gracing each spot as parallel zigzag motion rises. I zoom out to find no commotion, only magnification and movement in time and space. Gravity is a rhyme so sublime, nestled within time and paced, Within a mathematical place where pi winks its eye at me. Light curves along the horizon and I am free, a shadow humming through a black hole wonder while the universe tears itself asunder. The stars smile as my earth family tries to predict and frame a destiny. Me and you, three, one, and two, are triangular explanations of symmetry. I ask the universe to sing its hymn to me, expending every virtue toward every dividend. Time is a fractal, a spectacular tactical enactment, With all the atoms breathing between me and you. It is true, and they say there is nothing, I say look deep down, just look, find the intuitive mathematical muck, bathe in it, then save with it. All while the multiverse continues its dance Within every solar stance, numbers hum and the big bang fires its gun. Architecture bends and strings climb through the vortex, and I wonder what we will call ourselves when we reach this intergalactic interval. Will we feel the future’s clause and its power, stars disguised as principles all too smart for planetary darts. Sunlight dawns in every universal day as I gather the knowledge needed for the journey to come We rise above inner hells with fire inside, learning through experience, with wings to fly. Magic becomes mathematics as vectors chase light, fractions of traction pulse grace and presence with little or no regard for the energetic expense. Ciara Byrne Gaffney Ciara is a poet based in Dublin Ireland who writes at the intersection of art, science, and imagination. Her work engages deeply with visual prompts, using mathematical metaphor, cosmic movement, and introspective inquiry to create layered responses to the world around her. ** Heaven I’ve dreamed of heaven before. Verdant forests with calm river flow where peace was felt in my core Knowing what the gods have in store this life’s chances I will not blow. I’ve dreamed of heaven before. The lights shine on that distant shore: the promise is there, I know, and I will feel peace in my core. It’s the same for all, rich or poor: we all can bask in this serene glow. I’ve dreamed of heaven before. Though the dream ended, I swore: I believe, there’s no need to show; this eternal peace is felt in my core. It’s hard to believe in times of war when pain is all life seems to bestow, but I’ve dreamed of heaven before and felt its peace in my core. Michelle Garren-Flye ** the waterfall while the lush green trees sit peacefully amid the wind, the roaring waterfall rushes down into the stream below. yet, unbeknownst to the human eye, a sad truth awaits the cascade. with every drop of water, nothing even attempts to grasp and save it; they simply let it fade out of existence, another drop among countless others. however, when it comes to the animals living on the land, everyone will do everything within their ability to save, to preserve, to support. but the waterfall keeps on living. rushing, roaring, plummeting. just like any other day. Arynne Chang Arynne Chang is a 16-year-old high school student with a passion for poetry and songwriting. Her work often explores themes of memory, time, and the human experience through layered metaphors and reflective storytelling. Outside of writing, she enjoys composing music and discovering new ways to tell meaningful stories through both poetry and song. ** Another River Again, I find I am writing of rivers. Their water is always with me. A daughter of Venezuela, I swam the Orinoco River—a tadpole ghost frog, green body swishing. Later, my body was a rainbow trout in the Au Sable, the Holy Waters flanked by state forests, canopied in chilly Michigan wind, lapping water and the soft flicks of fly fishing. Now, I am just a human woman, middle-aged, who hikes among the trees of Pennsylvania, the place that finally felt like home. I knew because it smelled like green and rivers ran through it. The forests were never far away. I could visit my frog and fish relatives, remind them of me. Janette Schafer Janette Schafer is a poet, photographer, playwright, a realtor living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She holds an MFA in poetry from Chatham University. She is the author of three collections of poetry and the chief editor of two poetry anthologies. Her writing and photographs have appeared in numerous journals, newspapers, and websites, including Vox Populi, The Missouri Review, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Eunoia Review. She is a winner of the Academy of American Poets Prize. ** This City When my brushes and I wander away for a day, we float with the clouds, their glow of rose reflecting in the river, and, fading from sight, all the leaves on the trees curling toward the river we cross on a fallen limb, like a road to carry us home to our city that beckons us always. My art is at home there. Donna Reiss Writer, editor, teacher, bookmaker, and mixed media/paper artist, Donna lives in Greenville, South Carolina, where she is a member of the Greenville Center for Creative Arts, the Guild of American Papercutters, and the Poetry Society of South Carolina. Follow her on Instagram @dreissart ** A Land Untouched Lush. Ripe. Verdant. Full foliage in bright sun. Lands untouched by humanity, human pollution, or waste. Imagined dinosaurs graze on the top leaves of trees, unconcerned with tiny beings on the river. Rocs and pterodactyls soar overhead, riding updrafts and screeching with the joy of freedom. Heavy, full air pushes deep into your lungs, far beyond the thin gasps from the city. A pulp magazine paradise that may never exist again. Brydon Caldwell Brydon Caldwell is a long time teacher and emerging writer from the western edge of the Canadian Shield. He was recently named the winner of the 2026 Icelandic Festival of Manitoba Short Story Contest. His writing can be found in The Ekphrastic Review, The Fib Review, and the upcoming Fear Dealer, Opolis 2026, and Still From Somewhere anthologies. ** Reflections As if it's always been this way; once ochre sunlight sweeps the river of mist, a glass reflection reveals elms hovering over elms, maples rising above maples, and pine boughs curving over their bristled duplicate-- a miraculous duality that is after all significant beyond numbers an illusion of light creating one vision out of two a river inverted as a mirror time swept over a waterfall as if it's always been this way as it will be today. Daniel Warren Brown Daniel Warren Brown is a retired special education teacher who began writing poetry as a senior. At age 72 he published his first collection, an exploration of family titled Family Portraits in Verse, and Other Illustrated Poems. Daniel has been published in various journals and anthologies, most recently Jerry Jazz Musician, Chronogram Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review and Kinds of Cool, an anthology of jazz poetry. He was included in Arts Mid-Hudson's Poets Respond To Art in 2022-23. Daniel writes each day about music, art and whatever else captures his imagination. ** Keeping it Real with John Westley Hardrick Your partial namesake painted Double, Pairs, and Diptychs,—not you John Wesley Hardrick, a Hoosier Group impressionist master artist, whose delicate touch applied oil on canvas with masterful brushstrokes invoked indelible spirits and reenergized a mundane, forgettable landscape painting of any Indiana River that renewed vigor and life through eyes of commoners who recognized the shape of a distant organic bridge linking mighty banks where water catapulted past rocks, raced over nearby falls, and rushed their way down to local lakes and tributaries to give Hardrick’s pastoral paintings depth and perspective in a world too often appreciated and defined by its multidimensional nature rather than a forest green heartbeat denoting new beginnings along a waterway that reinvented its precise course through reeds, driftwood, and moss on a daily basis, making each new salmon run a challenge, best fishing holes a crapshoot, secret get-a-way knowledge partly guesswork. Oh, but you never planned, cultivated, or cared about a single vision perceived identically—person to person—through time in memorium; the essence of your Indianapolis landscapes and portraits captured nature’s naked beauty, now and into perpetuity, overwhelming static interpretation. Sterling Warner An award-winning author, poet, and English Professor, Sterling Warner’s works have appeared many literary magazines and anthologies including The Raven’s Perch, LothlórienPoetry Journal, and Ekphrastic Review. Warner’s collections of poetry include Rags and Feathers, Without Wheels, ShadowCat, Edges, Memento Mori: A Chapbook Redux, Serpent’s Tooth, Flytraps, Cracks of Light: Pandemic Poetry & Fiction, Halcyon Days: Collected Fibonacci, Abraxas, Gunills’s, Garden: Poetry, Seaboard Magic (2026)—as well as Masques: Flash Fiction & Short Stories. Currently, Warner writes, hosts/participates in “virtual” poetry readings, and enjoys retirement in Washington. ** John Wesley Hardrick’s Dreams In his basement studio, he recaptures reflections growing underwater forests churning waters clumped like clouds river banks a slather of oil slick colors. And travels with Lady X after her abandonment at the train station moving hand-to-hand town-to-town home-to-home incognito steady gaze bringing change. Jennifer Hobart After a career in healthcare data and analytics, Jennifer Hobart is picking up writing again. She recently attended the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. ** Making Contact Divided by a river, the banks observe each other Trees on each side, struggle to look more proud Yet whether accident or design, one reaches out A bridge between perspectives, and yet in a way With more in common than in reality, separates Water flows slowly beneath, as history ever does Glancing up and briefly holding it in its reflection Clouds look down, almost nodding at the scene Nature senses an important connection is made Yet just took only one perhaps fortuitous event Maybe chance played a part, but meaning stays Across the divide Leaning, bending and touching Began something new Howard Osborne Howard is a UK citizen, retired. Published author of non-fiction reference book, scientific papers and poetry. Interests mainly creative writing (poetry, novel, short stories, songs and scripts), music and travel. ** Adversity in Diversity Our privilege, John’s painting skill, imagined dreams beyond his lot - Kentucky Night Riders, failed kill, their hooded incites, escapades; his insights of more glowing scapes, the land more kindly than its folk. Did "Methodist" sustain at all beyond first chapel display site, as works were lost, unclaimed through cost - redemption from Railway Express - that patrons bloomed beyond his real of carpet cleaning, meeting ends? The writing on the wall proclaimed rejected murals came with price - as "aspirations lowered" claimed - but bared the truth, unrecognized, that molten metal was the charge - a milieu framed by labour’s sweat. From trucking to the taxi trunk - a sales pitch point in later years - for prizes, medals, lowly paid; that foundry where he earned his keep. Discarded, re-imagined work found home at last in public park. This peaceful calm remarkable, though surface tension floats through scene, a mirrored theme through outcast works, the schemes of those throughout his class. Unbalanced treatment, Parky sign, exhibited for those who see. Stephen Kingsnorth Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review. He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com ** No Home Beyond the Easel Pearled into one that hasn't already been painted. The river quickens into whirlpools -- the dance of light you see on a polecat's back shortly before it disappears into a terrain of dark canopy that never stops climbing. The river has no home beyond the artist's easel, waiting for the paint to dry. The sky is a chalky cobalt blue. Trees lean in like maulsticks. Over a prism of reflection -- blue blends into black and back to blue, pearled into one. Mark Heathcote Mark’s poems are published in journals, magazines, and anthologies in both online and printed forms. Residing in the UK from Manchester, he is the author of In Perpetuity and Back on Earth, two books of poems published by Creative Talents Unleashed. ** Bucolic Scene belies what has shuddered through my life. And oh, how the placid lake and me, we let the ripples run Let them rush on, collecting into tumultuous churning -- below, steel blue and grey-white, underneath our charmed facade. On the canvas, I stroked verdant foliage to life, tossed brilliant petals in my own divine arrangement, my own freedom to choose. My grandfather was a free man, a Kentucky landowner, but just like the river and me, he had to run on. Night Riders were closing in, and he didn’t hesitate, he chose escape, and with my grandma and their weeping children, they ran further North-free again, yet burdened by multiple losses: Our home, surrounded by acreage, nearby family, animals, friends. Beyond his lifetime, and mine, this will be known as “Generational trauma” but back then, his example to us all was “Move ever forward.” His foresight saved my father, his siblings, grandma, our entire family legacy. And I was taught to push trauma down, to the bottom of the frame- where my artist eye could observe it without wincing, the fury contained forever in the work, below. My artist hands, turned browner in the sun, were not besmirched by their colour, this quality unseen in the work. Yet some can sense a special glow- It’s my soul, It’s my soul. 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, Collaborature, The Rockvale Review, Green Ink Poetry, Punk Monk, Poetry Quarterly, The Light Ekphrastic and The Niagara Poetry Journal, among others. Debbie was proud to be nominated by TER for the Best Small Fictions, 2024 anthology. Debbie is an avid Tybee Island beachcomber and lover of all things nature. ** Beneath For weeks Mara researched deep sea creatures, devoured ichthyological texts, scoured the Internet for visual reference. And with painstaking attention to detail, she’d created a creature with tentacles tethered to biology, but which had nonetheless emerged from the depths of her imagination. After her presentation, it took mere minutes to paint it away. The presentation had flopped; Dr. Hardy had lived up to his name once again. “You’ve painted a competent landscape in the style of John Wesley Hardrick, then defaced it by plonking this cartoon cryptid in the foreground.” She’d tried to defend the work, but he’d cut her off. “If you want to throw in with the pop surrealists, you’re in the wrong MFA program. Your thesis exhibition is coming up, Mara. Think about it.” She had thought about it, and what pained her more than the rebuke was the thought of her student loans, and what it would mean to shoulder all that debt with no degree to show for it. So, she applied the white, burying her creature beneath a placid reflection of clouds. Or, she mused, perhaps the white mass was a plume of water, splashing upward as something substantial submerged itself. Not gone forever, but biding its time just below the surface. Something strange and unique and powerful, something patient and certain to reemerge. Tracy Royce Tracy Royce is a writer with fiction in 100 Word Story, Bending Genres, Flash Frontier, and MacQueen’s Quinterly. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions, and her story, “Sibling Rivalry,” was selected for Best Microfiction (2026). Find her on Bluesky. ** The Inquest Last night I wrote you a letter, its words breeding a poem. This morning I walk into the mountains, their waterfall rushing with emotion, my handwriting on a page of white vellum... Helga Gundersen I My father died and always said his soul would become his passport back to a land where lindens whispered old secrets and their deepest fragrance at dusk. II My father died and left us his other life, a journal of stories sitting under dust and lamplight. Inside, a sheet of paper was folded, slipped into the heart of his hand-written pages. We were surprised and read the poem learning that a young woman grieved the man who had forsaken her. The air damp and her cold fingers catching the sudden fall of tears. III My breath gone, cobwebs spun from its dust and a red moon bleeding through the mist as pathos fills the woods, the pastures like a herding song, .a calling back of what's been lost, emptied into the glacial. thaw pouring its cascade over a broken bridge of bark, a breach of trust,,, These images and more spilled from that woman's tongue long before our birth. Yet, we now become the donees of her song inhaling the scent of wine and candles. Their flames peaked along with our curiosity as we surmise -- she could have been the daughter of a farmer or school master, someone my father loved months before he left Sweden, someone who wrote letters that were never answered. A girl who had a miscarriage and afterwards walked the pier; her blonde hair measuring the wind's intensity her eyes watching ice drown in the rush of melting water. The river wide and waiting. the fir trees mantled with blue sunlight, the lindens just beginning to leaf. Wendy Howe Wendy Howe is an English teacher who lives in California. Her poetry reflects her interest in myth, women in conflict and history. Application of imagery, personal reflection and rhythmic language are basic elements of her writing style and expression. Over the years, she has been published in a variety of journals. Among them: The Poetry Salzburg Review, The Interpreter's House, Indelible Magazine., The orchards Journal, Songs Of Eretz, Sun Dial Magazine, The Linnet's Wings and many others. ** Down the Green Valley Down the Green Valley the runnel flows gathering leaves, twigs, bubbles: fish blows following wake to caress the shore. Old man casts line; young man thinks it a bore. Meaning of life in a pool, old man knows. Bait, throw, reel, bait, throw, reel. Old man slows. Walk along muddy banks . Sun glows - perfect spot, resting on the lore down the green valley Frogs splash, bugs fly. Fate only throws A moment. The old man sighs, bestows life, if only young man walks through the door. But, he moves to cars, girls, days of teen core. Old man nods, youth will learn he supposes down the green valley. Robin White Robin is a lifelong creative: poet, writer, painter, collagist, and mixed media artist. She was born and raised and lives in a small gown in Georgia, USA. She loves music from gospel to hair metal. Going thrifting and antiquing followed by good food and good company is a perfect day. Her dream is to live on the beach at her favorite place in the world, Jekyll Island, GA. ** A Moment in Time How does one capture a moment, a feeling, an expression and encompass it all in one single work of art? I’ll tell you how I do it. My family and I work together to create one cohesive masterpiece.
In a general overview, this is how I preserve a special moment in time. What do you do? Kindest Regards and Well Wishes, Maple Brush Katie L. Davey Katie L. Davey is an aspiring author from the rural parts of St. Louis, Missouri. She acquired her BFA in Creative Writing, with minors in Equestrian Studies and Psychology, at Stephens College in May 2024. There she worked on Harbinger Magazine as a staff intern and is a member of Stephens College's chapter of Sigma Tau Delta. She has published six pieces through six separate challenges for The Ekphrastic Review, the most recent being "A Humble Request" as part of the Skyllas Challenge. ** In Xandiana An African-American Evoked this scene, not by decree But his own hand: a seeing man, He raised blue hills where water ran Here for the world to see. To buy this now would be a sound Investment, but the artist found Too few who bought, in spite of all his skills, And though he dreamed in Xanadu for free, He drove a taxicab to pay the bills, And sold his visions incidentally. This makes one think how many were Stripped of chances by the law: But think of all that Hardwick made: The faces and the views portrayed, Scenes of living grace galore. Remembering the human price, Be grateful for whatever led This Indiana artist's head To Kubla's kind of paradise. Ruth S. Baker Ruth S. Baker has published in some online poetry journals. She has a special love for animals and visual art. ** The Holy Water Let me live and die in the kindness of this holy water. The welcoming beauty of life unknown. To submerge in the mystery of life. With the sacredness of a Baptism. Let me sink -drown and be born again. Where did this blue world come from. A mysterious land of water and silk. Of endings and beginnings. Of life untouched. Of purity so bright it hurts my eyes, And makes me love all that is. To swim - to paint . No judgement . No pain. Just of sea of beauty To fall back to the animals and live. To be holy again. Sandy Rochelle Sandy is an internationally published poet, actress, filmmaker, and voice over artist. A Voting Member of the Recording Academy in the Spoken Word Category. Grammy and Emmy nominated. Publications include Impspired, Dissident Voice, Verse Virtual, Amethyst Review, Wild Word, Haiku Universe, One Art, and others. ** To John Wesley Hardrick Regarding Landscape You overwhelm the eye with rich detail -- some softened by the mist becomng veil -- in what I see as portraiture of lands that adds another sense to eye and hand's iconic feel for yield of time's terrain so nurtured by the flowing through its vein of many rains as manna heaven sent, though random, reassuring as intent to be for faith enduring promise kept by torrents and by tears that softly wept would destine such abundance to evolve adapting as it must with firm resolve to rise above the stolid earth and stone as future's kernel yet again regrown. Portly Bard Prefers to craft with sole intent... of verse becoming complement... ...and by such homage being lent... ideally also compliment. Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise for words but from returning gaze far more aware of fortune art becomes to eyes that fathom heart. ** During the Walk The clouds are anonymous cumulo-nimbus lines that perch atop the green hued dreams. Cupping the long arch of a path divergent in the forest, the trees cluster amidst the continuous ringing cries of cicadas and crickets. There is no respite from the high decibel songs now monsoon’s here. The land came first and then the sprinkle of trees and then the white barks that stand clothed in the shadows. The water here is a mirror, affording an honest straight forward reflection of all the thoughts that are ferried by the cool morning scented breeze. Why are they ferried everywhere we go? Like the hidden cost of a burden one doesn’t really need. Beyond the curtains of mist, rise the hills. Beyond the trees the terrain extends an invitation for the walk towards the great within. The footsteps are mere intimations of yearning outlined in the wet mud. The shapes you leave behind on the soil are not yours to carry. Step lightly. The feathery air will still know you were here. The lake does not whisper any clues but the spot in the middle which is a soft stroke in silence. The bank curves. The still waters navigate deep into this land of wisdom, this sky that holds the blue, the reminiscence of a knowing sun that lights up the façade of memories. The hidden frogs, the beetles, the ants, camouflage purposefully in time although everything is moving towards night. The gift of a rustle, the benediction of a bird call. Nothing pristine enough for the waters and the leaves to leave untouched. Look into the waters and you will see a face carved with lines. The clouds in the eyes. The heart is a map of choosing wherever you want go. The reflection is a compass on the long way back home. Look up into the distance. The ripples don’t lie. They’ll let you know the breeze here was light, ready to move along with the mind. Preeth Ganapathy Preeth Ganapathy is from Bengaluru, India. Her works have been published in several magazines, more recently, in Pena Literary Magazine, Pensive, Braided Way, The Orchard Poetry Journal and elsewhere. Her microchaps A Single Moment, Purple, and Birds of the Sky have been published by Origami Poems Project. Her work has been nominated for Best Spiritual Literature. **
0 Comments
 A Hard Reign, by dan smith (USA) 2025 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 A Hard Reign, by dan smith. Deadline is August 14, 2026. 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. Scroll down to donate $5CAD (about $3.75 USD). 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY. Send your work to [email protected]. 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 SMITH 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 14, 2026. 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.  Carnival in Madureira, by Tarsila do Amaral (Brazil) 1924 To Tarsila do Amaral Regarding Carnival in Madureira You paint your nation into art as samba steeped in festive heart, the equal of Parisian fete to herald spring and celebrate the love that mimics river sway -- as mime, as music, as ballet -- but here to ocean's harsher beat of ripple, roar, and brief retreat you rightly colour crisply drawn a past that must embrace a dawn more modern than its yesteryear as faithful gather to revere, in hues -- befitting soul -- so bright, the coming sombre wait for Light. Portly Bard Portly Bard: Prefers to craft with sole intent... of verse becoming complement... ...and by such homage being lent... ideally also compliment. Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise for words but from returning gaze far more aware of fortune art becomes to eyes that fathom heart. ** The Great Carnival The great carnival. People coming together. In celebration. Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher has been writing since 2010 and has had short stories, micro-flash fiction, and haiku poetry published. She currently resides on Long Island, New York with her husband Richard and adorable Shih-Tzus Breanna and Maximus. ** A Moment of Joy Held Still My lips began to turn up to form a smile as soon as my eyes caught hold of this image. Squared off lines, shapes mostly piled on top of one another people stopped in the midst of walking talking, laughing as if someone had called out “Stop the Action!” Even the wind listened—halting the flag in mid-wave on the tower. It’s all as it was the night I lived it; as it still is when I relive it in my dreams. The night I went to such a festival the Ferris wheel stopped with me at the top and I, at age five looked down at the scene below, wondering if I should count this as fun or cry out in fear? Looking down, that crowd far below, seemed to be stopped too, caught in mid-movement. Their laughter and lightness floated up to me. They were halted yet still happy. My fear melted away, and I chose to celebrate my situation, as a moment that put me on top of the world, a moment of joy. When my memory rolls back to that moment, whether when I’m awake or when it finds its way into a dream, the scene is captured as a tableaux by my consciousness, as still as as a photo or painting -- all action halted, but full of life full of joy. Joan Leotta Joan Leotta offers encouraging words through pen and performance. Her essays, poems, and fiction have been nominated for Pushcart and Best of Net multiple times, has won several awards, and has published five poetry books with three different poetry publishers. Her storytelling work includes folklore and personal tales told for youth and adult audiences and the presentation of one-person shows, the most recent being Louisa May Alcott, Writer, Nurse, Activist. ** feathers of a different flock the procession wears colours as loud as the drums the bass the shouting vendors construction works on the square we dance to drilling hips swinging necks craning even the houses stretch their arms capturing bells and ringing light there is so much sound even the hills and stones are rolling we cannot stop our legs drunken as dervishes we keep spinning I wish to plunge into a cold stream Eva Lantsoght Eva Lantsoght is a multilingual poet from Belgium, who lives in the Netherlands and Ecuador. Her work has appeared in Katern, Museum de Mindere, De Optimist, Spillwords, Hesiodos Flow Fest, has been awarded with the Soetendaele poetry prize and Harelbeke poetry prize, and is forthcoming in Eunoia Review. ** Na Boca do Povo Ai, Senhora! You are on everyone’s lips, the talk of the town, as your hips sway, feet step forward and back, then crisscross along the street in the botafogo samba strut. Shoulders out, belly in. Dance, Mamãe, dance! That dress in Baía de Guanabara blue, how it hugs your curves! That headscarf red hibiscus bloom, your skin rich coffee, you move through Madureira’s steamy heat to the music of vendors calling, “Fale comigo, minha rainha! Talk to me, my queen!” You stroll to the squawks and squeals of the mercadão’s ducks, goats, and pigeons. Breathe in spicy mint, rosemary, basil, and leeks. Avoid the revelers who weave with aguardente. Treat yourself to the sweet coconut treat of quindim. Ai, Senhora! The noisy train still clatters and screeches as it passes through the bairro. Just more music for you to sway your hips, move your feet, throw back your head, and celebrate the raucous, unfettered joy that is Carnaval em Madureira! Jennifer Hernandez Jennifer Hernandez teaches immigrant youth and writes poetry, flash, and creative non-fiction. Her words can be found in public installations, literary journals, and spoken into the air. Recent homes for her work include Silver Birch Press, Talking Stick, Agates, and the Detroit Lakes Flowerpot Poetry Walk. Pushcart-nominated, Jennifer has newly transitioned into the role of president of the League of Minnesota Poets and believes that through the power of language we can change the world. ** The Infinite Porch No one lives here declared the incidental passing by B-1439, our ancestral home. A carnival erupted as we crossed the threshold. Bells chimed so long locked in stiff silence of now swaying curtains. The walls breathed, empty spaces filled with the rising scent of samosas and jalebis. Voices buzzed as we crowded around the table laid with dal, chawal, sabji, roti. Celebrations followed with heirloom rampage- a life-sized box full of quilts stinging air thick with naphthalene. Dried-up bottles of perfume, evaporated nail polishes and a hexagon box of bangles locked shut by rust. Hangers sagging in silk stripped of their youth. It had rained the night, the wet grass glistened in the sun- tented poles yielded to an unwilling recline, a low murmur stirred the air. On a vacant porch where time had felt infinite before. Abha Das Sarma Abha Das Sarma lives in Bangalore, India. An engineer and management consultant by profession, writing is what makes her happy and fulfilled. Her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Spillwords, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Sparks of Calliope, Trouvaille Review, Blue Heron Review, Poetry X Hunger, here and elsewhere. ** Stranger in Madureira Sparklers sizzle with light under the moon's piñata split in half, spilling a thousand stars, women in bright skirts burst like fireworks in the air pop dancing to Samba, while a tourist watches fanned by the green plumage of palm trees. The ocean's breath clean and clinging to her body that still remembers a lost love. Pleated in pale linen with her hair drawn back, a bun the breeze unravels, she feels the fraying strands, the chords of her common song unstrung, out of tune. Her shadow stretches toward the street catching the drift of red petals bleeding into their own sense of saudade and the scent of hot cheesy bread. Pão de Queijo invoking her whim to abandon flesh and become spirited as the gust of revelers whirling round the corners of carnaval, the iron spine of its Eiffel Tower. Wendy Howe Wendy Howe is an English teacher and free lance writer who lives in Southern California. Her work is deeply influenced by diverse cultures, history, myth and women's issues. Over the years, she has appeared in a number of journals including: Liminality, Silver Blade, Eye To The Telescope, Strange Horizons, Mirror Dance, Carmina Magazine, The Copperfield Review, Eternal Haunted Summer and Sage Woman. Her most recent work has appeared in The Otherworld Magazine and Indelible Magazine. ** Letter To My Sister, Cecilia do Amaral 5 March, 1925 Minha Amada Irmã, Some would call me silly and ridiculous to write to my beloved sister that passed away some fifteen years ago. But you, Cecilia, you would not be one of them. And so, I write to you, knowing you are somewhere above me, looking down, and sometimes sending me the most extraordinary butterflies! Our favourite, the blue Caligo Beltrao, which many claim to have never seen, gather around me in twos and threes, even when I’m far from our countryside hacienda! I know they are messages from you, sweet one, and although I often have “talked” to you aloud, now I’m writing, so whether this makes me crazier or more sane, here we are. In my heart, I believe you will read this. So many things have happened since our idyllic time at Colegio del sagrado corazon! The worst of which was, of course, losing you before your 23rd birthday. I think the best times of my life so far were spent with you in Barcelona, in the excellent boarding school we were privileged to attend. While other girls cried themselves to sleep at night, we whispered in a single bed, until one of us began to fight sleep, not making sense except to one another! Such a marvellous thing, to be sent away to school with you, no mamae nor papai to query us, no governess or overseer to interrupt our endless games, no bratty brothers trying to get between us, screaming loudly, trying to scare us apart! I recall helping you with your French homework at school, and pulling out ‘en croissant’ from lunch, wrapped in a napkin, from my pocket! How surprised you were to see it, complete with a tin of raspberry jam! I loved sharing that special time with you, little sister. Now my life is filled with so many bright colours, yet your butterflies remain the most special colour I’m blessed to spy! Oswald and I attended the Carnival Madureia last month, and the entire promenade was awash in bursts of bright colors. It reminded me so much of our childhood in the countryside! How spoiled we were, to be surrounded by huge swaths of the greenest green grass, the river water tinted cerulean in summer, the gigantic orange sun dipping down to impress us in the early evening. Not to mention the kaleidoscope of butterflies, as many colours as we could dream up, right before our wide-open eyes! These are the colours I used in my latest painting, named for the carnival. The style is a mixture of the techniques I learned in Paris with the master, Georg Elpaus, and a new, rather comical, square method for portraiture, called "Cubism." For all I know, you have already previewed my efforts, but if not, you will (Hopefully soon!) be able to peek in on an art expedition in our city. It will be staged with some of my other friends, including Oswald, who may be my future husband! He has been requesting tiny illustrations from me for his poetry books, and we work very well together. I feel he will ask for my hand very soon! A troublesome conflict has been brewing in the streets of Sao Paulo recently. The people are not happy with the government, and little uprisings are starting to explode all over our homeland! If the military takes control, I fear things will get even worse than they are now. When I last saw Papai, he was, as always, focused on the coffee! The coffee, the terroir, the price, the size of the crop. He fusses about these concerns, while mamae furrows her brow over every exploit of our brothers, and worries about not only our family, but all of the workers, and the entire population of Brasil! Selfishly, I focus on my lover and my art. I have been contributing to “Klaxon,” an avant-garde magazine started by Oswald, that promotes our little “Group of Five,” my closest artistic confidants. Of course, I am concerned about the prospect of war. But my art reigns supreme to me, and has done so ever since you dared me to draw the chalky statue of the Madonna that stood outside our school. Since then, my love, I have been locked-in, wanting so desperately to be known as “The painter of my country!” Yes, me, a mere woman, telling the story of Brasil, through my color-soaked brushstrokes! It is my fondest wish, Minha! Are there any strings you can pull up there? Please ask that I become even more inspired, enough to make it all come true! Te Amo, Your Irma mais veha, Tarsila P.S. Promise to send one tiny caligo beltrano to me soon. I will take it as a certain sign you have read this! Debbie Walker-Lass Debbie Walker-Lass, (she/her) is a poet, collage artist, and writer living in Decatur, Georgia. Her work has appeared in Collaborature, The Rockvale Review, Green Ink Poetry, The Ekphrastic Journal, Punk Monk, Poetry Quarterly, The Light Ekphrastic and The Niagara Poetry Journal, among others. Debbie was proud to be nominated by TER for the Best Small Fictions, 2024 anthology. Debbie is an avid Tybee Island beachcomber and lover of all things nature. She also enjoys writing with Jahzara Wood, they write collaborative poetry as “The 1965.” Debbie is an avid Tybee Island beachcomber and lover of all things nature. ** Carnival Season The Carnival captures lightness of being in a daylight offering of confetti painting in a ritual to honour the sun. O, I, the toad princess, with body compressed to the ground, seek this lightness-- the exact feeling of entering a book for coloring flat shapes not weighted by dimensions of volume. Purity reigns in positioning green mounds in the background, while flags wave messages in semaphore poetry: red of passion, white of innocence and tangerine of blessedness. These hues shape a quilt of things valued by the Carnival People, the ones waiting for the lift to the top of the tower as children wade in a pool of water to cool their feet in the round surround of fecundity. One woman stretches to happiness. Others proud-hatted and dressed with dignity. Milton Avery would witness nothing less than frivolity at the fairground of fantasy. Cynthia Dorfman Cynthia Dorfman writes from Maryland and Wisconsin, depending on the season. Her current work focuses on the small town in North Country New York where she grew up. She'll visit the town on the edge of the Adirondack Mountains this summer. She seeks to keep her memories bright. ** Train Ride to Madureira The colors of Brazil slide by the train window--- green and yellow leaves elongated like arms reaching over the train top as it chugs through the rain forests on its way to Rio and the festival in Madureira, to see true the centerpiece of the vibrant carnival celebration; a recreation of the Eiffel Tower done in majestic Pau Brazil fashion. The train moves through jungles and villages and becomes the agent that grants the pride of native Brazil, and commits the colours, and people of the interior to Tarsila do Amaral's art. Brazil for Brazil! And at a stop thick with humidity a young man named Villa-Lobos enters the train. And the sounds of clacking and the train whistle as it moves through the countryside settle like colourful jungle birds on his sheet music notation. With colour and sound the train brings the art and music of Brazil to the outside world. The little train in travel and destination the true wonder of Brazil! Daniel Warren Brown Daniel Warren Brown is a retired special education teacher who began writing poetry as a senior. At age 72 he published his first collection, an exploration of family titled Family Portraits in Verse, and Other Illustrated Poems. Daniel has been published in various journals and anthologies, most recently Jerry Jazz Musician, Chronogram Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review and Kinds of Cool, an anthology of jazz poetry.. He was included in Arts Mid-Hudson's Poets Respond To Art in 2022-23. Daniel writes each day about music, art and whatever else captures his imagination. ** … it’s the way a carnival makes everyone feel … good! What a start-- they have their own Eiffel Tower brought back from Paris with love in the joy of the paint returned a replica like so many others around the world this one with the funkier look of an artist’s style with bold outlines to make it stand out proud of the colourful surrounds it’s a motif to celebration of a sort a totem to creation in the capital bounds home to festivals and carnivals parades of music dance to Afri-Brazilian tradition and the curious sports of flag dressing and balloon hanging performed by all ages ranging from childhood to os avós with folks of all shapes and sizes in a kaleidoscope of rainbow bright Red Indigo Orange are its primed capital hues a mixed palette of house walls and gaily painted roofs standing before the foothills and rock formed mushrooming in shape tipping beneath the sky blue where the revellers hold their fashion parade under Eiffel’s stride and crisscross girders filled with their pride and awesomeness they’re upbeat and joyous for the life they create revelling in the sunny disposition and the good atmosphere they generate Peter Longden Peter Longden, born in 1957 in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, lives in Coventry, England with Sally and son, Joe. After retiring from a long career in youth work, Peter has had a dozen poems published, by The Ekphrastic Review, Wee Sparrow Press; an anthology called Yesterday's Diary, published during lockdown in Coventry. Peter was also was shortlisted for the 9th O’Bheal Five Words International Competition (2022). Eldest son Ben, Estefi and grandaughter Gigi live in Argentina. ** Carnivaliant There's an awful lot of toffee in Brazil; We've so much ginger bread we built a tower (An Eiffel Tower) where you can climb your fill: A cupcake will be lowered on the hour. The houses glow like candy in a store: I'm standing like a teapot, dressed to kill; Come, join the feast - what are you waiting for? There's an awful lot of toffee in Brazil. The flags are turning like a crazy mill; The local hill is friendly as a cloud; You can bring dogs or donkeys, if you will; They won't be heard, the colours are so loud. Preserve this in your memory: mad caps, Houses that smile, sweet as a three-buck bill; Could there be sticky moments? Well, perhaps; There's an awful lot of toffee in Brazil! Ruth S Baker Ruth S Baker has published in some online poetry journals. She has a special love for animals and visual art. ** The Year I Could Not Go to the Carnival I lay with swollen, mumped cheeks on the playroom sofa. I tried to distract myself with comic books and cartoons, but the year I could not go to the carnival, I thought of the goldfish I would not bring home in its plastic bag aquarium when I didn’t land a ping-pong ball in a bowl to win it. The year I could not go to the carnival, my hands remained clean and not sticky from pink cotton candy. I could not feel the crystallization of fluffy puffs to pure sugar in my mouth. The year I could not go to the carnival, I could not get motion sickness on the merry-go-round or crack-the-whip, could not purchase a raffle ticket, I could not get overheated while waiting my turn for a pony ride. The year I could not go to the carnival, I put my hands over my ears so I wouldn’t have to hear my sisters and the other kids on the block gush about their prizes. The year I couldn’t go to the carnival, I vowed to save my money and spend it all at next year’s carnival. Barbara Krasner Barbara Krasner is a New Jersey-based author and poet who successfully recovered from the mumps and measles. Her most recent books include The Color of Time and Other Stories (Blaze/VOX, 2025), The Night Watch: Poems (Kelsay Books, 2025), and The Wanderers: Poems (Shanti Arts, 2026). She’s co-editor of Kelsey Review, the literary journal of Mercer County (NJ) Community College. www.barbarakrasner.com. **  Landscape, by John Wesley Hardrick (USA) c. 1930-1940 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 Landscape, by John Wesley Hardrick. Deadline is July 31, 2026. 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. Scroll down to donate $5CAD (about $3.75 USD). 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY. Send your work to [email protected]. 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 HARDRICK 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, JULY 31, 2026. 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.  Lake Keitele, by Akseli Gallen-Kallela (Finland) 1905 Underwater Escapade I’m an old poem waiting under the surface for my next mission I’ve requested permission to bring my mermaid along Now I’m emerging bursting through the calm water with a new purpose My request has been granted the mermaid’s name is Tanka Now we’re exploding into powerful magic with a new purpose Tanka asked if she could bring Haiku, her porpoise, along Now we are singing Joni Mitchell’s Circle Song loudly and proudly Joni asked if she could swim with Haiku, Tanka and me Now I am waving goodbye to my three true friends as they find new forms I will miss Tanka the most she’s always got extra lines Back under water all seventeen syllables huddle together Marit Anderson Marit Anderson discovered the healing power of poetry when she attended a free library poetry workshop after injuries from a car accident led to closing her psychotherapy practice. When the poetry workshop ended, Marit wanted to create that kind of opportunity in Encinitas, and did it! Her free prompt group, Awaken the Poet Within, has been meeting at Encinitas Public Library in Southern California for over a decade. Her work can be found in Summation: The Merging of Art & Poetry, San Diego Poetry Annual, and Encinitas Review. Dr. Anderson has received a Surfing Madonna Oceans Project Artist Award, and a Proclamation from the County of San Diego honouring her contributions to the arts. ** Phenomenon Becoming the quiet point, where nothing can be, hidden. What makes you believe I can speak Chinese- As a citizen. Who will accept the risk, for my sin. Surely this must be heaven reflected, lines couldn’t lace- Finer geometry- an island cuts through the blue. Natural and approachable- it’s hues of wood and green lay opposite to reality. These days still fickle distances harder to reach. How can I remain anonymous in- this world This day-proved successful… ( Behold ) “Enjoy your life!” When the violence causes, Silence, we must be, mistaken. (The Cranberries) MWPiercy Michael W. Piercy : "At the intersection of Art, Poetry and Contradiction, you will find my work, you will find me. Observing memories and the present moment , thinking with an eye that shadows the natural world. Philosophy, Theology, and Science are core of my writing - I have found that I am a synthesizer. Managing ideas which do not always cohere. A manipulator of ideas." ** Lake Keitele Crazy crackling sky Calms downwards into arches, Long, cool, patient, light. Julia Griffin Julia Griffin has published in some online verse magazines, including The Ekphrastic Review. ** Sun-Setting Time A glint of golden light blinds eyes. The sheen slants into the horizon, slides over a line – a separated now from later … then here to beyond. We sit in silence as you gaze at swirls of gulls circling a carcass – listen as they dive into the eddies. Finally, your brush laminates wings to a silver strand of sandy shore; the birds soar from your palette as we stand in awe. Pat Kabra Pat Kabra is a nascent writer, professor and a former diplomat. She teaches at the George Washington University in DC and has published poetry in the Yellow Arrow Journal and the Beltway Quarterly. ** Lake Keitele, 1905 I grew up beside Cayuga, long and cold as a thought you don't finish. What I knew first was the air how it changed at the water's edge, heavier, alive with something that had no name in the inland world. I breathed it in like a question. The water itself I kept at a distance. Beautiful, I said. And meant it. And meant: don't ask me in. This lake is like that. Finnish. An island sits in the middle of it the way an island sits in itself, unreachable, complete, not waiting for anyone to arrive. The zigzags crossing the surface, wind meeting current, they say, or the wake of a hero rowing through myth, I say it's what happens when two silences have been moving toward each other for a long time and finally meet, and hold. Below all of this: the dark. The cold that doesn't know what season it is up here where we are trying to be calm, to be beautiful, Cayuga and Keitele both, to not think about the bottom. Lynne Kemen Lynne Kemen is the author of Shoes for Lucy (SCE Press, 2023) and More Than a Handful (Woodland Arts Editions, 2020). Her work has appeared in One Art, The Ekphrastic Review, MacQueen's Quinterly, and elsewhere. She received a 2024 Pushcart Prize nomination and serves as Editor/Interviewer for The Blue Mountain Review. She lives and writes in an 1830s farmhouse in rural Delaware County, New York, where she shares her property with a murder of crows, one of whom she has named Edgar Allen Crow. ** Shrubs 1. They line their bodies in rust. My mother watches from the window as the shrubs furl into russet, pulling life from the mud glut with mulch. Salt stains speckle the marble countertop. Outside, each plant spears out of the ground, still, listless, like dead bodies searching for water. Each one a faceless idol, worshipped by a set of buds atop the hill in the neighbour's yard. They lean at their graves, hoping life springs out. My mother screams in broken English– all teeth and no gums, a crooked set of rotting seedlings– out to the earth for rain. 2. It’s almost dusk. She hums a melody about waiting for the season to come. Her voice cracks over the bridge like marble, like dirt. All I ever saw was her spending years compacting soil with her bare hands, rationing water among herself and the plants, waiting for a break of burgundy or lavender. Days in the bathroom, drowning her frock in crimson spit, mouthing the reasons she left, over and over again. 3. At night, a hollow sound echoes through the stacked sheets of plywood and timber, the air grows heavy, and the sound of drumming against steel fills our only room. Rain. I step out, stand near the window, and watch my mother already there, smiling for the first time. Moonlight spills through the panes, illuminating her teeth, a sun-bright bloom of stained glass. 4. In the morning, she hems her fingers over the cabinet, glancing between the last tea bag nestled in her hand and water pooling through the front door. The shrubs are somewhere, drowning in the cerulean body reflecting nothing but clouds and the neighbor’s plant, a dense thicket at the edge of the scene. 5. Maybe the neighbours back home were right. Greed would kill eventually. The shrubs always sat, wide-eyed, waiting for rain, losing all they already had– not grateful for what they were given. Back home, my mother took everything for herself without a word, bringing me along, and left. 6. My mother sucks her tongue, the spit glistening like ruby in the half-light. She wraps it over the gap between her front teeth and sighs. She calls me over to the window, points to the neighbour's bush, and tries sculpting a metaphor about how only the well-placed win in this life, and that there’s nothing we can do to control it. Liviru Liyanage Liviru is a 14-year-old writer and student with work published in Voiceworks and enjoys science, music, and taking walks through nature. ** Garlic Moon I curl my hand around the withered, grassy plant and pull gently. A white garlic bulb emerges from the ground, a shock of roots springing into daylight for the first time. I give it a small shake, and the bulb is clean, like a smooth baby moon. I place it gently on the grass beside me and reach for another. The sun beats down on the back of my neck, and the caffeine from my morning coffee starts its parade through my chest. My hands are hungry for this dirt. I glance up at the next row, and Tomas is already so far ahead of me, a whole bundle of garlic plants with their long, straight necks tucked under one arm. I watch the way his giant shoulders move, beast-like, as he reaches and plucks with little effort. Our eyes meet as he looks up. His eyes cut away before he can see the red blush creep across my chest. I shuffle further up the row on my knees and keep my core tight as I pull the little garlic bulbs from the earth. I hear Hannah laughing from behind me. “How do you know if a Finnish man likes you?” “Han,” I warn. “He looks at your feet instead of his own,” she chuckles. “He doesn't like me.” I'm sure of it, but my heart beats faster anyway. I peek at her over my shoulder. “How would you even know? You barely know the guy.” “I don't need to. I've seen the way he watches you.” I yank on a stubborn plant, but the grassy bit comes off in my hand as I land heavily on my ass. I glance involuntarily at Tomas, and he is smiling at the ground. Yeah, he saw that. I stand and brush the dirt from my jeans, then stretch my arms over my head. My back aches from days of pulling nails from second-hand wood. The sleepless sun burns in the sky, and I’m already longing for the lake. Today we are helping a local widow with her garlic harvest. Our host, Denis, loaded all his workers onto the back of a neighbour's truck this morning. We wound through fields of wildflowers and past glass-skinned lakes until we reached the field where we are now. The neighbour was Tomas, and his hand landed on my waist as he pushed me up into the bed of his truck. I can still feel his handprint, like it's been seared on my skin. I step over my row and crouch on the other side, facing Hannah. “I still think we should move here when we retire.” “We could move here now.” I laugh. “Did you win the lottery?” “There's a house in the village for thirty thousand pounds.” I scoff. “You mean a parking space?” She pulls her phone from her back pocket and scrolls a moment before turning it towards me. The picture is a red weatherboard house with white trim. “You're serious?” We had fantasised about staying here, but it was a pipedream. Eventually we will need to go home and face our futures. “If we both put in all of our savings, we could actually afford this. Right now.” Something swirls in my chest, and I squash it immediately. “In cash,” she adds. I sit back on my heels. Hannah stabs her trowel into the soil so she can talk to me with her hands. “You hate your job. You say all the time you wish you could start over, do something else.” “We're doing that. We've travelled the world for six months.” “And aren't you ready to settle down? Have our own fridge again? Running water? Internet that works?” Denis lets travellers stay with him for free, but it's basically house-camping. The toilet is a hole in the ground. Outside. “You have all that money your dad left you, and I've got those shares.” There's a nervous excitement in her eyes, like she's been sitting on this for a while. “You're serious about this?” She nods. “We've been here for two weeks,” I remind her. “In summer. What if we hate every other season?” “You mean when the lakes freeze over, people go ice skating, and sauna every day, and drink mulled wine at the pub?” I cross my arms. This is a real place, not a romance novel. “There's just one little problem we may need to address.” She makes a pinching gesture in the air. My heart sinks. Of course there's a problem. “Since neither of us are citizens, we'd need someone local to be on the title.” Nope. No way. If I'm plunging all my savings into something, I'm not going to give a stranger the ability to take it. Hannah sees the answer on my face. “Or…” she says, and pauses for so long I'm sure she isn't going to say anything at all. “We both need to marry Finnish men.” I laugh. “That's insane.” She shrugs. “I'm pretty sure what we were doing in London was insane. How is that normal, and this”—she gestures around at our friends in the field—“isn't?” My last panic attack came after I took a personal day and my inbox climbed to a thousand unread emails. Hannah found me curled up on the floor, convinced she might have to call an ambulance because I couldn't catch my breath. My inbox followed me everywhere. I'd wake in the middle of the night, log in on my phone, and answer twenty or thirty emails just so the number looked smaller in the morning. “I know it's crazy,” she says quietly. “But I've never seen you this happy. And I feel…” She trails off, a wistful look settling over her face. “Like you're home.” She nods. And I know at that moment that we are about to do something crazy. Again. Zoe Tate Zoe Tate is an Australian writer and poet. Inspired by travel, nature, and human connection, she writes stories about finding home in unexpected places. She is currently working on her first novel. ** Lake Keitele A lake in Finland. Dancing clouds in a blue sky like Matisse’s paper dancers. Reflections bend clouds long on the water. Crisscrossing currents slice cloud and mountain reflections. No mirror here. Crisscrosses tell an epic tale. An island is a mere tuft in the middle, undisturbed by the epic. The dancers might be snow on peaks so high they become part of the sky. Snow or cloud, either way, they lounge across the lake that refuses to reliably reflect them. But the focus is the lake, the current, the story is in that reflection. When we’re told an epic tale we are forced to reflect on ourselves, our crisscrossing paths in life. What clouds or dancers drifted into our world? The crisscross currents are not natural. No wind is that linear or neat. There are serene waves nearby, but not in the crisscross. There is no ripple in the crisscrosses and they don’t reflect. They interrupt reflection. Judy Aks Judy Aks grew up in NY and now lives and writes in Seattle. Her muses include family, nature, politics, and everyday life. An educator for most of her life, Judy loves to teach and learn through poetry. Her poems have appeared in Eunoia Review. ** Breath Dark island anchored, The sky lays down in white bands. Lake breathes in the light. Elanur Eroglu Williams Elanur Eroglu Williams writes from Istanbul, Türkiye. ** Island The clouds bathed in still water while I rubbed coarse sand between two fingertips, smelled suntan lotion of a girl in pigtails and pink. I fix my eyes on a point on the island where i can feel cool in the dark green, safe. The moment had finally come where I could tell you. Christina Siemering ** Lamentations Mother. Your voice sounds its warning: all is not right with you. The air, still thin, makes skin brittle in places that used to be smooth like ice as it melts in mid winter sun. Thin sheets on the water mimic the shape of trees, naked in their hibernation. They will not fully leaf when the earth turns to spring and the receding water flaunts its mockery. Dramatic rage blinds the ignorant and deafens the greedy. Perhaps it is time, Shekhina, for your deceptive beauty, for your hand to reach out across the heavens and sweep away the detritus of humanity like in days of old. Kaila Schwartz Kaila Schwartz runs an award-winning high school theatre program in the San Francisco Bay Area where she lives with her spouse and kitty overlords. She loves ekphrastic writing and can often be seen in museums scribbling away in notebooks. ** Oh Sherwin, Oh Williams, I Don’t Want to Cover The Earth, I just want a blue bedroom. How can I choose between ANCHORS AWEIGH-- a dark, rich navy blue with deep charcoal undertones for a moody vibe-- because yeah, I’m a moody gal; or HALE NAVY-- a historically sound deep blue balanced with sophisticated gray tones-- because, yeah, I want to be deep & reliable; or SALTY DOG-- a bright, true nautical navy for my “Hey Sailor” nights? Your mid-tones compel me to admit that my bed’s seen more than its share of DENIM as I’ve spread-eagled and struggled to zip up new blue jeans. Let’s talk about STORM CLOUD: You call it a neutral, I say this blue-gray leans into lightning bolts and thunderclaps, what’s neutral about a tornado watch? And WATERLOO? Who. named. this. With its scent of failure, its sad, slight green undertones and notes of exile to Elba? Let’s tap those middling paint cans closed and lean toward the light toward UPWARD’s breezy sky blue mixed with silver-gray undertones, toward RAINWASHED’s spa-like blue influenced by soft green undertones. Let’s relax even more with TRADEWIND’s light, coastal, uncomplicated blue. Finally, I choose you, STARDEW: for you mute the blue and calm my thoughts, and lead me over silvery wakes into a dreamless sleep. Skyler Lovelace Skyler Lovelace is a Wichita visual artist and writer exploring how landscape, memory, and architecture intersect. Working from her light-filled studio inside a historic 1924 elementary school, she creates acrylic landscapes inspired by the transformative rhythms of the Flint Hills, alongside expressive cityscapes celebrating the unique lines of Wichita architecture. Deeply rooted in community creativity, Lovelace also hosts an experimental Art Club and facilitates the Principal Writers poetry collective using the supportive Amherst Writers & Artists method. Learn more at www.skylerlovelace.com ** Nevertheless, Love Me I watched her skate; across the lake, gently breathing in cool blue air. Risk in her wake; he worries for me, until I am back with him. She brushed my arm; a tender touch, after waltzing on flat water. Her grip is firm; my fingers are snug, in white gloves holding him close. Naturally; about me, nothing, is seen as artificial. Yet like Foucault; he makes himself, a work of art, arms around me. Nevertheless; I am the wind, you can love me, but keep me not. Chris Wilmott After a business career in computer technology, Chris Wilmott’s BA and MA concerned fine and applied art. His art practice explores anxiety, with reference to Münch. As well as to climate, AI and artificial wombs. These are matters about which Münch had no concerns. Chris’s original ekphrastic writing reinterprets his painting as well as the paintings of others; in reverse-ekphrasis, his paintings reinterpret into oil, his poems made of words. ** echoes water mirrors sky, becomes the between color rearranges form, translates into light surfaces shimmer, reveal what is essential time grows still inside each breath when asked to explain, say yes Kerfe Roig Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Her poetry and art have been featured online by Feral, Pure Haiku, Collaborature, The Chaos Section Poetry Project, and The Ekphrastic Review, and published in The Anthropocene Hymnal, and The Polaris Trilogy. Follow her explorations at https://kblog.blog/. ** What the Summer Light Wrote The summer storm drove us, marked by zig-zag gusts of wind, beneath these half-lit vaults. Will wisdom be spilled if paradise speaks in truths we read in the lake's waters? In the scroll of strokes letters shaped like seraphim are written in flames. You ask the questions in the grammar of piety but no time for answers. I woke up from dreams listening with my taut skin to all that is unsaid. When the stars came close we gathered them up like fruit spilled across the lake. What words had meant were like a forest on a dark shore silhouetted against the sky. Where is that first word spread into infinity and released by sound? Sounding like lightning the word that opened up graves lives again to speak. Before we awake and remember being born each of us are infants Morning came from night when you breathed your breath in me life felt like fire In dreams I saw this -- a feather ladder raised up reaches the summer's light Here on hallowed ground pilgrims cry aloud like me: Save us, Spare us. See us. Royal Rhodes Royal Rhodes is a poet whose DNA indicates Finnish roots. He lives in a quiet village near a nature conservancy and enjoys reading poetry in translation. ** Winter on Lake Keitele My boat is moored, tied by a thick dun-coloured rope to the jetty next to my father’s house. I am pulling on my waders, ancient dull yellow trousers strengthened with patches at the knees and repaired with patches on the arse. I am tying them around my waist, the frayed leather belt on its last hole. I pull the boat towards me by the rope. The damp wooden ribs, holding the taut cross-planks, shine briefly in the watery sun. I grasp the prow and step onboard, swinging myself round onto the seat. This is the first day this winter that the ice has broken enough to take the boat onto the lake. The first day since I came home to look after Papa. In October my mother left after 40 years. Her sister in Turku has cancer. She needs care. We all know mother isn’t coming back. Papa clings to the hope but even he, in the dark hours, knows she will never return. She is as absent as if she were dead. He didn’t care for her or their love. He has been a cantankerous man from my earliest memory. Grumbling, complaining. Arguing when things didn’t go his way, pushing Mother into line, insisting she agree with him, expecting loyalty of word and deed. My brothers and I encouraged her to resist, to rebel, but she shrugged and stayed. We drifted away. Like flotsam and jetsam we bobbed on the waves, gradually finding ourselves way out at sea, not knowing how but understanding why - too many bridges needed to get back, too much pain to resist, too much shame to carry. My father doesn’t want me here. I can’t cook like her. I can’t keep house like her. We both know I don’t want to be here. Like her. The ice has stayed longer than usual. Through the winter months I caught fish through ice holes and cooked them on the stove, sizzling and steaming in our small kitchen. In early December, as I cleaned and gutted a small pike at the kitchen sink, Papa complained that I caught very few fish to show for the hours I spent on the ice. I told him he should talk to the fish about it, not me. He stood up, his hands fisted as he push down on the table, his face the colour of rough red wine. “Don’t talk to me like that in my own house,” he roared. “Your brothers would never talk to me like that.” “My brothers aren’t here having to put up with you day and night. They have lives.” He lunged at me, no doubt to hit me as he did when I was a child, but he is stooped now and his shoulders have lost their strength, stiffened and frozen from a life of labour and long, cold winters. I left the fish in the sink and went out into the yard, leaving him to find his own way back to his chair. This was his father’s farm. It is small, too small to support a family. There are always buildings to patch, animals to feed, fields to be ploughed. My father filled the gaps at our table with rabbits shot in the fields, chickens that survived the fox, and of course, fish. I have spent the winter filling the gaps. Christmas passed without decorations or presents. There was no card from Mother. No call to let us know how she is or wish us Happy Christmas. On Epiphany a neighbour brought half a Christmas cake, not needed in her house. He didn’t invite her in, our only visitor of the festive season. “I’m sure it’s not as good as Usva’s but I know you were always fond of cake, Tapio.” Reluctantly, he grunted a thank you and shut the door. Chopping wood behind the woodshed, I saw her pause and consider knocking again then put her hand down and retreat across the yard to the road. I raised my arm to call her back and thank her properly but, like her, I let it fall. In late January he started looking for his gun. A rifle he uses to keep the deer at bay with warning shots. I hid it and the bullets. He called me all manner of names when he couldn’t find it. It was weeks before he believed that Mother must have it in Turku. Now in early March I have weathered winter with him. I have taken his rudeness, his complaining, his criticism. I have ignored him ignoring me. I have worked all day to feed and care for him. Today I am going to the island. Behind it the perch and pike hide in the lake’s deep deep water. I have the gun beneath the tarpaulin. I have two bullets in my breast pocket. The oar locks, bracing the oars, clink with every stroke. My hands are cold but I have my rhythm now. The boat glides smoothly through the near-freezing water. I leave the shore behind, the jetty becoming a collection of painted matchsticks, the house hidden within the conifers, closing around it as I row. My toes inside the waders squeeze the rocks, feeling the roughness through my socks. I steer the boat, navigating the currents my father taught me. About a kilometer past the island I pull in the oars and lift the tarpaulin. The mist is beautiful, sliced by the sun into ribbons. A cat’s cradle for unwary men to get snared in. A maze to navigate, like life. I watch the changing patterns, the paths that open up as the ribbons slacken and disappear. I breathe for the first time since I returned. I undo my belt, roll the waders down, take out the rocks and throw them over the side, waiting for a sound that never comes. Finally, I let the gun drop, swirling down into the depths. The mist is clearing. I turn the boat and head back to shore. Caroline Mohan Caroline Mohan is based in Ireland. She writes short stories mainly and occasionally flirts with poetry. She explores themes of belonging, fractured memory and secrets, sometimes with humour and sometimes with danger. She is currently trying out a variety of genres for fun. She enjoys writing with and learning from others in workshops. ** Still In the still morn, cacophony shatters held breath, silence flinching, fleeing through the evergreens sparkling with dew. Sunlight slants through the trees, a prism through the limbs, branches, needles to dapple patterns across the placid pond. Robin White Robin is a lifelong creative: poet, writer, painter, collagist, and mixed media artist. She was born and raised in a small gown in Georgia, USA and can drive on a wet red clay road without going in the ditch. She loves music from gospel to hair metal. Going thrifting and antiquing followed by good food and good company is a perfect day. Her dream is to live on the beach at her favorite place in the world, Jekyll Island, GA. ** The Norway Spruce and the Sun I have once again mistaken the intensity of your noontime gaze for warmth of a different kind. I too quickly forget that to absorb your radiance when your power is at its peak is to shrink my own shadow. But I do not shrivel when you turn away from me. I see my true stature in the lake’s surface only when you are in retreat. Laura Nagle Laura Nagle’s flash fiction and poetry have recently appeared or are forthcoming in The Sunlight Press, HAD, Trash Cat Lit, and the Irish-language journal Aneas. Her translations from French and Spanish include Prosper Mérimée’s 1827 hoax, Songs for the Gusle, and Adela Zamudio’s 1913 feminist novel, Confidences. ** Confluence I’ll take this moment to wish you a wide open sky with clouds like giant gulls waving in celebration. May spruce and pine mountain embellish your horizon, pied wagtail, arctic tern and Spirit wind hail your days and may bumper stocks of pike and zander rise in lakes wherever you throw your nets. May you see shadow, light, flecked moods and reflections in each other’s face, but want to be nowhere else. May you remember going down into crystalline waters and emerging bathed clean by holy love, companioned and propelled into depths then whispered on to shores of need. May quietude flow from your convergence like a magnet and a million superlatives fill your lips daily for each gesture, because gales will blast, orbits will change and you’re painting the start of a masterpiece. May you identify poisonous algae, woodworm, rust, as well as the wonderland in each day and as you launch, may sea-shanty, psalm, trumpet and pipe herald the way for others to track and navigate. Helen Freeman Helen lives in Edinburgh but loves to travel and wrote this poem in response to this painting for her niece’s wedding in Finland - on the end of a jetty, in front of a scene just like this. ** The Way Back Swainson’s Thrush were missing, spirals of rising notes out of hearing before return to groves they knew across the field, summer timeshare, nursery, family seat. April nights going back, remember, steady stroke, stroke, past starlit brothers strutting arm-in-arm, fish swimming well south of bear. Early fog thins to mist on the lake nursing green springs. Cold recharge thirsty subsoil sips, percolates through earth and rock faults on its way to streams and river. Morning clouds arm in arm in a jig along the ridge-line, cross to open land in darkening columns weighing down my brief toehold to ground. Incidental action figure, I look anywhere but there. Pines stretch toward aspen limbs, arched the way we reached across the bed, what won’t be seen or heard again but for winding song, from this moment just gone, and to this, just passed, just now, flown beyond compare to time or how far. Lynn Axelrod Lynn Axelrod’s poetry has appeared, or is about to, in print journals and online in the U.S., England, and Ireland, such as Marin Poetry Center Anthology (annual), Orchards Poetry Journal, Sheila-Na-Gig, and The Ekphrastic Review; is in University College Dublin’s James Joyce Library Special Collections; was featured in the San Francisco Chronicle; and selected as a broadside display for an exhibit on monarch butterflies. ** Birthmarks Perhaps they were blue gray or bluish-gray my newborn back served as a canvas displayed the brushstrokes of DNA. In shades of stormy skies my congenital dermal melanocytosis appeared as cloudlike shapes reflected a distinct mix of Finnish Swedish and Siberian roots. Unaware of our blend of genetics my mother asked the doctor about my bruiselike patches– All Asian babies have this. But she’s not Asian. Oh, yes, she is. From both sides family stories offered potential the promise of insight until improved science revealed new light mapped a realistic landscape one bathed in maternal origins. Between the zigzags of uncertainty mirrors of clarity traveled the coastlines of northern Scandinavia illuminated the taiga and tundra of the Kola Peninsula and confirmed my grandfather’s indigenous ancestry. Oh, yes, she is Sámi. Jeannie E. Roberts Jeannie E. Roberts is the daughter of a Swedish immigrant mother and the author of nine books, including On a Clear Night, I Can Hear My Body Sing (Kelsay Books, 2025). She writes poetry and prose influenced by memory, the human experience, and the natural world. An award-winning artist and poet as well as an Eric Hoffer and a multiple Best of the Net award nominee, she holds a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Arts degree. From 2018 – 2026, she served as a poetry editor for the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs. She finds joy spending time outdoors and with loved ones. ** Night Swim Do you remember me jumping in the lake after seeing you with her at the school dance, how the white dress I imagined wearing to our wedding ballooned like a lily around me, my fingers brushing the surface, stirring constellations in the sky’s reflection, hair slithering around me, as if ink bled from love notes you slipped me during class, where I sank to a wet purgatory to mourn the life I’d never have, and in the darkness, I wanted to die, but hope kissed me and I emerged gasping? Neither did I— until I recognized your face in the grocery line, but stopped myself from speaking when I realized I’d forgotten your name. Amanda Rivard Amanda Rivard enjoys writing. Her stories have appeared in a variety of publications including 50-Word Stories and 101 Words. ** Lake Keitele broad flat lines zigzagging over a lake that reflects white clouds -- wind and currents, or the wake of an invisible boat? a dark wooded island surrounded by bright blue water -- I think of my late wife standing with me on the shore, saying the trees look lonely I used to believe that the souls of lost loved ones stayed by the far hills -- but now I think they are here, serene, where wavelets gleam Gregroy E. Lucas Gregory E. Lucas lives in Hilton Head, South Carolina. His poems and short stories have appeared in Blueline, Sunflower Tanka, Sparks of Calliope, and elsewhere. Follow him on X @GregoryELucas. ** Salute Beneath a somber summer sun, we gathered at Charlie’s Island. Held hands in a sacred circle. Breathed in the pine. Listened to the lake weep. A perfect send off since this was Charlie’s favorite retreat. Nora spoke first, sharing Charlie’s love of fishing. Caroline shivered and sang a sweet lullaby. Then Connor spoke. We all gazed at his unlined face, the youngest of us all. He looked unfazed, and eloquently quipped about how his father always put his family first. The only lie spoken. silver ribbons swirl journey beyond, seeking eternal love Barbara Edler Barbara Edler lives along the banks of the Mississippi River in southeast Iowa where she writes to heal. Her work has been published in various journals and anthologies, most recently in the July issue of Moss Piglet. Her haibun "Salute" is in response to unresolved emotions one often encounters after losing a parent, lover, friend, or child. ** Blue Wind, whip our heroes through current blue in wide grosgrain ribbons water blue. Let those streamers scream and pronounce At last Finland is free! White and blue! Let distinctive Suomi sounds flounce, in Kalevala rune ancient blue. Ilmatar carries each fluid ounce. Son Väinämöinen digs, plants trees blue. Let his zither play tune, renounce the strangers, take back Lake, icy blue. And I, sing heroes with paint, denounce Russian vodka, toss to yonder blue. Barbara Krasner Barbara Krasner is a New Jersey-based poet who looks forward to traveling Europe again where she saw the bluest water ever in Austria. Her recent publications include Poems of the Winter Palace (Bottlecap Press), The Night Watch (Kelsay Books), Insomnia: Poems after Lee Krasner (dancing girl press), The Wanderers (Shanti Arts), and the forthcoming Memory Collector (Kelsay Books) and The Appropriation of Brueghel (Shanti Arts). She serves as host of The Ekphrastic Book Club for The Ekphrastic Review. ** Sanctuary on Lake Keitele I come here in a dream, invisible, to escape the chaos of my world. Peace settles over the glassy lake like an icy mist. The cold air clears my thoughts, freezes my fear of the future. It engages my senses like a sharp mental reset. In the distance, I see a dense, coniferous forest. Its dark silhouette stands like a sentinel guarding the shoreline, their reflection unbroken, except for the ripples that drift across the lake like lines from an ancient story. I struggle to decipher their message, but the language is foreign, full of unfamiliar expressions, belonging to another time. Perhaps they tell tales of ghosts of ancient dwellers in search of a sanctuary for their weary souls. My eyes settle on the solitary island. Still in my dream, I see a weathered cabin through the trees where an old woman lives. She traded profound sorrow for the solace of solitude. In search of peace and contentment, she wanders the rocky shores. In the depths of her grief, she exchanged misery for birdsong and the company of trees. I want to call out to her, tell her she’s no longer alone. She lifts her head, steadies her gaze on the lake’s glassy surface. Her reflection is me! Barbara Ann Abbott Barbara Ann Abbott is a poet and flash fiction writer who discovered her passion for writing late in life. She draws inspiration from memoir, art, nature, profound loss, quiet moments of everyday life, and the complexities of human connection. Her work has appeared in more than fifteen literary anthologies and online journals, including The Ekphrastic Review and California Writers Club publications. She is currently planning her first collection of poetry and prose. Barbara lives in Northern California's wine country with her husband, Bob.  Carnival in Madureira, by Tarsila do Amaral (Brazil) 1924 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 Carnival in Madureira, by Tarsila do Amaral. Deadline is July 17, 2026. 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. Scroll down to donate $5CAD (about $3.75 USD). 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY. Send your work to [email protected]. 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 do Amaral 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, July 17, 2026. 9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is. 10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 15. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages! 16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly. Dear Writers and Readers, We had an extraordinary response to this particular artwork. Clearly both the artwork and the subject struck a major chord. The thrill for me of reading numerous takes after the same painting, and seeing it through so many eyes and souls, never fades. Each poem and story gives me a different window into the human imagination, and makes me see the artwork more fully. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of you writers, whether or not your work was selected this challenge, for participating in this amazing experience. We aim to choose a wide and generous selection, but cannot include all the worthy works we receive each time. The challenges remain a popular, essential part of The Ekphrastic Review, a consistent and growing aspect of the journal among so many projects and opportunities. It is an honour to read your entries every session. Every writer who participates in these challenges, once or always, is an integral part of this amazing community that we are building together. May I invite you to join us in the many exciting opportunities ongoing and ahead. There are so many ways you can get involved. We have a book club, thanks to Barbara Krasner who hosts them. There have been two sessions so far and the next event is in three months. These quarterly ekphrastic book club gatherings are held on zoom, and involve a different book on art each time with rousing discussion. Click on the book club link in the overhead menu for more information. We now have a monthly reading series. Join us for July's session on zoom to hear some of your favourite ekphrastic writers read their work. These sessions involve five writers each time and community conversation after the reading. Click on Electric Ekphrasis Reading Series in the menu above to sign up for the free monthly readings. The Heaven Eleven marathon is coming up very soon. Don't miss out on the epic event of the year. Our fifth annual ekphrastic marathon celebrates our eleventh birthday! This event is intense and exhilarating, a day of total creativity. Writers participate independently from all over the world, connecting for support, community and inspiration in a FB group. I'll be there all day cheerleading you along and answering questions. Click on Heaven Eleven in the sidebars to register. Finally, if you haven't discovered The Ekphrastic Academy yet, sign up today for an upcoming zoom course. We offer single session zooms and longer courses on various artists, themes, and writer's craft subjects. These workshops are about creativity, connection, and conversation. We look at and discuss art together and do generative writing exercises with art. Sessions ahead include Ekphrastic Journaling, Chagall, photographer Tina Modotti, exploring darker themes with Night in My Veins, and our monthly Ekphrasis Anonymous sessions, a generative writing event for ekphrastic addicts. Click on the Academy link in the menu above. Here's to a fabulous summer. Happy reading and writing! love, Lorette  Factory Workers on the Way to Work, by Helene Schjerfbeck (Finland) 1922 The Dreams of the Associated Realities So many times I am awakened to sanitized dreams real dreams that quietly drift away from my mind at night can sanitize the dark True dreams that show understanding can continue into the daylight very soon the day awakens the mind and can create the freeze from the dream Chloe Hougan Chloe Hougan is a painter and jewelry maker from Stoughton, Wisconsin. Using brilliant colour, powerful pattern, and poetic titles, she reflects abstractly, bravely, and boldly upon both her inner and outer worlds, capturing them with distinctive vibrance. She is non-verbal and autistic, and although she only recently discovered creative writing, she enjoys it tremendously. She has been previously published in The Ekphrastic Review. ** Being the Moon We take turns being the lantern for each other. Today your cheeks glow like the full moon, the road before us illuminated by your glowing, lunar care. You look down, listen, gently gather up any fragile words that have fallen from my mouth, ask about how the days have collected at my feet, about my parents’ health, about the things we carry that remain cloaked by busy days. My neck welcomes the moonglow now floating all around us. Your light absorbs my crimson; my crimson has turned you a dusty rose. We walk in the biosphere of loving friendship, where green leaves flourish and everything drinks in rain and nourishment. Next month, my hands will emanate a healing light, as I draw you close for a hug on our walk. Vines will grow all around us on the path. I will catch what falls for you in our well-worn basket of knowing. I will listen. I will carry. I will care. No one person can be the moon. Cristina M. R. Norcross Cristina M. R. Norcross is the founding editor of the online poetry journal, Blue Heron Review. Author of ten poetry collections, a multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, and an Eric Hoffer Book Award nominee, her latest book is The Poetry Apothecary (Kelsay Books, 2024). Cristina was featured in the Poem-A-Day series for the Academy of American Poets in 2021. You can find her work in the James Crews anthology, The Wonder of Small Things (Storey Publishing, 2023) and the anthology series boxed set, A Boxful of Poetry (Storey Publishing, 2024). www.cristinanorcross.com ** Duplex: This Old World Has Always Been Ending This old world has always been ending. That is why we walk to work on two feet. That is why we once crawled on hands and feet. Those were the days when we had nowhere to go. Days when we have nowhere to go will return. But now there is the factory, the office. And the factory has nothing to offer. And the office is not really a factor. There is so much we really should factor in. Sadly, we have too little capacity. Because too many have too little to eat. Why did we bother to walk, to crawl, to swim? Why did we ever bother to evolve? This old world has always been ending. Rose Menyon Heflin Originally from rural, southern Kentucky, Rose Menyon Heflin is a poet, writer, and visual artist living in Wisconsin. Her award-winning poetry has been published over 250 times in outlets spanning five continents, and she has published memoir and flash fiction pieces. She has had a free verse poem choreographed and danced, an ekphrastic memoir piece featured in a museum art exhibit, and two haiku published in a gumball machine. Among other venues, her poetry has appeared in Deep South Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, and San Antonio Review. An OCD sufferer since childhood, she strongly prefers hugging trees instead of people. ** What the Body Does Two women, smeared into their own faces. Schjerfbeck knew: you stop seeing yourself somewhere around the third winter of the bus, the dark before, the dark after. One of them has put on red. Warpaint. The mirror watched, unconvinced. She did it anyway — that small performance the body enacts before the body goes. The other has closed her eyes. Not sleep. Something older. The way a person disappears inside the going, the destination unremarkable, the motion enough. “Time to do the donuts.” The coffee lukewarm, the window black, the self somewhere back at the house, still in the chair, still possible. You learn to send just the shape of yourself -- the coat, the hands, the reasonable mouth -- into the cold machinery of another day. What remains learns to wait. Lynne Kemen Lynne Kemen is the author of Shoes for Lucy (SCE Press, 2023) and More Than a Handful (Woodland Arts Editions, 2020). Her work has appeared in One Art, The Ekphrastic Review, MacQueen's Quinterly, and elsewhere. She received a 2024 Pushcart Prize nomination and serves as Editor/Interviewer for The Blue Mountain Review. She lives and writes in an 1830s farmhouse in rural Delaware County, New York, where she shares her property with a murder of crows, one of whom she has named Edgar Allen Crow. ** The Palette Knife of Despair The factory girls plow through the doors. They punch in with their time tickets, hang up their coats, sit at their sewing stations and think about their self-portraits on the verso. They punch in with their time tickets, their faces still staunched by weather and worry. They think about their self-portraits on the verso, the girls they wish they could be: Their faces no longer staunched by weather and worry, fat-cheeked and rouged, hair coiffed by professionals, the girls they wish they could be if only their families had money, if only, if only. Fat-cheeked and rouged, hair coiffed, professionals, but palette knife scratches their skin, erases their dreams. If only these girls had money, if only, if only, they could lift their eyes from the throat plate. Palette knife scratches their skin, erases their dreams. Their sunken eyes reflect in machine’s metal. Unable to lift from the throat plate. Money only comes from the needle, the thread, the tread. Their sunken eyes reflect in machine’s metal. The factory girls, no way out. Money only comes from the needle, the threat, the tread. They hang up their coats, sit at their sewing stations. Barbara Krasner Barbara Krasner's ekphrastic poetry collections include The Wanderers (Shanti Arts, 2026), Insomnia: Poems after Lee Krasner (dancing girl press, 2026), and The Night Watch (Kelsay Books, 2025). She feels fortunate she was able to view Seeing Silence: The Paintings of Helene Schjerfbeck at The Met in January 2026. Visit Barbara's website at www.barbarakrasner.com. ** Women Working Hardly halting, Heavy hearting, never a moment passing slow Industry increasing, indeed injuring, protections long forgot, forgoed Looms lurching, leaders lurking, closing every bright window Shuttles shifting, shifts stacking, missing the children whilst they grow Treadles turning, toes toiling, walking here through rain and snow Women working, wonder wintering, watching wefts pass to and fro Employees earning, economy expanding, uplifting unknown politicos Women working, window washing, putting on domestic show Offspring objecting, often obscuring, frequently found here undertow Rest reclusing, routines racing, he wants a trip to lovers’ row Kitchen keeping, knot knitting, life is labor this she knows Julia Harr Julia Harr is a narrative practitioner who lives in Queens, NY. She is happiest browsing the many art collections of NYC and writing shorts and poems in response. Professionally, you can find her practicing narrative therapy and offering narrative medicine workshops to other healthcare providers. www.story-ethic.com ** White Death Factory air, thick, black— coughed into the night. Are you the girl with blonde hair, who helped mother? Face lowered, eyes downcast, bearing the weight of disapproval, even in submission. Even if I catch the shadow on your face, it does not bring father back; his last breath hangs in the night air. David Hershhorn David (he/him) is an Ohio poet drawn to unsettling verse as well as editor for the forthcoming horror poetry journal Fear in Dust. David holds a Bachelor of Arts from The College of Wooster in Philosophy where he was awarded the John F. Miller prize. When not reading or writing, David enjoys boardgames, playing the baroque flute, and listening to music. David is a proud member of the Horror Writers Association, Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, and the Academy of American Poets. ** the caste of office angels we’ve become angels on wings floating in our modern city silent hands pull strings and arms extend and legs retreat footsteps whisper leather dreams billboards beg for believers dark sirens no rocks at all we weave gears and sparking trams to make our robes and jewelry walk with me on concrete rivers we skate through morning and night and sing to the new gods in glass and steel ribbed towers climb higher and higher so no one ever needs to let down their hair ever again mike sluchinski mike sluchinski reads vonnegut's harrison bergeron religiously and got hooked on ekphrasis. grateful to the ekphrastic review and other great journals for getting it right when so many others just couldn't get it. can't get this hook out of my lip. ** Instructions for Perrine Girl, don’t weep and moan. Lean over that soapstone sink and scratch the blood from her frocks. Emerge from that cobwebbed basement and bleach the linens on the line. Girl, don’t covet her rubies. Just dust the vanity and tidy the bedroom. Stash your dreams of luxe with Madame’s baubles. Girl, don’t feed your hunger stones with raspberries from her ice box. Wipe the counters and scrub the floor. Lay down your longing. Perrine my girl, you transcend service. You must crack open your geode soul, release the saffron breath of the crocosmia flower, and tend to your unfurling spirit. Allison Connolly Allison Connolly revels in the challenge of telling a story in one hundred words. Her work has been published in The Ekphrastic Review and in scholarly journals. She is Professor of French at Centre College and splits her time between the U.S. and Europe. ** Facing the Day Caps with tight straps cover hair or bald heads. Alabaster Woman looks inside herself with shaded lavender eyes. A woman of fire faces what the other avoids. Red Woman’s neck is a blade/ lips blood red/eyes blackened. There she is, despite the darkness heavy around them, Red as lava Red as a lover Red as a forest fire that turns aside, burns out, for no one. Meg Senuta Meg Senuta: "A graduate of Grub Street’s yearlong intensive Memoir Incubator, Pushcart nominee, and finalist for Fourth Genre’s Steinberg Memorial Nonfiction Award, my words have appeared in Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, and Cognoscenti, and were featured in Wake Forest University’s Narrative Medicine’s series and Tell-All Boston. I have served as patient advocate on research grants for inflammatory breast cancer; patient/actor to teach medical students how to deliver bad news; and mentor for newly-diagnosed cancer patients at Dana Farber Cancer Institute. I studied traditional textiles in Sweden, and learned weaving and spinning from a Scottish folksinger. I have actually used tenterhooks." ** What Lies Beneath We, the under-represented, all appear similar. With blank stares into a fixed destiny, we seem colourless, voiceless, featureless, yet essential to the cause, but under our assembly line skin lies a dancer, a musician, a chef─ dreams waiting for an opportunity to bust from this factory floor prison. We identify this as wishful thinking until she arrives with tinged lips and a non-compliant attitude, a welcome addition of colour and hope to the grayness of monotony. It’s clear, for her, this stop is temporary. Her arrival alters the drudgery vibe, every downcast worker vies for a spot to toil next to this living revelation of grander possibility and potential; we feel rebellious change in the air. Elaine Sorrentino Elaine Sorrentino, author of Belly Dancing in a Brown Sweatsuit (Kelsay Books, 2025) has been published in journals such as Quartet Journal, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Gyroscope Review, Sparks of Calliope, Sheila-Na-Gig, Poetry Porch, The Ekphrastic Review, and Haikuniverse. She is facilitator of the Duxbury Poetry Circle in Duxbury, MA. ** Twins Twins? no, we are not even sisters, only our hands do the same thing tackling eleven wool spinning machines 24/seven for the last ten years, as we just came of age, but instead of soul search this post- and pre-war age pushed a different future for us, regardless God’s incredible plans. Of course, we know how to spin by hand, but the master wants it fast and fine and yes, all the fun is gone: no boys around so we signal our joy by dropping the spindle down giving them a chance to pick it up and touch our fingers. Now it’s just the noise of metal and brass pricking our years while eyes stay attached to the hubris of details which sooner or later stick begotten as the yarn of our living, or better – surviving. Ekaterina Dukas Ekaterina Dukas writes poetry as a pilgrimage to meaning and her poems are often honoured by TER and its challenges. Her collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europa Edizioni, 2021. ** Factory Workers on the Way to Work forward to what work forward from what past they breathed the red & black air their masks grew from sand & ash death & sadness daily knowing yet unknown Sister Lou Ella Sister Lou Ella has a master’s degree in theology and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer. Her poems have appeared in America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and new verse news and in five anthologies. She was twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015. (Press 53.) Five poems from the book, set to music by James Lee III were performed by soloist opera singer Susanna Phillips, principal clarinetist Anthony McGill of the New York Philharmonic, and Grammy® nominated pianist Mayra Huang. ** We Wake in the Dark We wake in the dark, my sister and me, not needing to see as our work clothes are draped across a chair, ready to drape over our shoulders. Our toes feel for the floor, our sturdy shoes shaped by our shapeless stockings. Every morning the same, save for the sabbath, when we sleep until first light. Do not despair for us. We bring home the rent and pride in our labour. Our neighbours toil with us, making wonderful works for the world to use. We dance in bright dresses on Saturday night. Our faces are smiles then; our shoes made of satin. Our suitors are many. Despair not for us: We labour with our neighbours in community. Donna Reiss Writer, editor, teacher, bookmaker, and mixed media/paper artist, Donna lives in Greenville, South Carolina, where she is a member of the Greenville Center for Creative Arts, the Guild of American Papercutters, and the Poetry Society of South Carolina. Follow her on Instagram @dreissart ** My Big Sister She was brave, adventurous, a front-runner in her time, a lady in red. She was my world- my protector, my confidant. I looked up to her, admired her strength, trusted her with my life, my heart, my soul. No matter where I moved, she came to me- came to ground me, came to comfort me, came to remind me that she was always there. Things are different now. I cannot forget her screaming voice, her angry face, her harsh words. I cannot let my heart get close again lest it be scorched, ridiculed, betrayed. There are no words or actions that can change things- we only walk together as siblings, side by side, in stony silence. Lynn Bastoni Lynn Bastoni began writing poetry more than a decade ago as a unique way to teach her middle school students important life lessons. As a former middle school principal, she had many opportunities to shape attitudes, cultivate empathy and affect the choices of the adolescent children in her charge. Her book, Bullying, The Remedy Lies Within was published in 2020 and is a testimony to her commitment to educating through the use of poetry. Lynn lives in Duxbury, Massachusetts and is a long-time member of the Duxbury Poetry Circle. Her poetry is often written from the seat of her emotions and reflects her love of the natural world. Rhyming is a particular passion and a well-honed art, but anything goes! ** Ashes in Their Eyes So you heard of the fire? Sisters lost at the Triangle Waist Company. We go about our business at the factory, our hair bobbed and angled so bobbins won’t catch tresses like threads wound around spools of commerce. The darkness of our eyes, not from ashes thumbnailed on our foreheads to remind us of Lent and dust, but pools of kohl under our eyes filled with lint that disclose lost sleep and sadness. So you heard of the fire? Could that happen to us? Doors locked with no exit, latched with locks like padlocks on the hope chests of their hearts. Scraps of shirtwaist cottons and linens charred and trapped. The tatting of needles. The tapping on tables, keeping pace with fingers as they raced, unable to unlock the locks. Confined behind wooden door posts of death. So you heard of the fire? Women for hire. Cynthia Dorfman The dark eyes of the women in the Schjerfbeck painting made Cynthia Dorfman think of the fire at the Triangle Waist Company in New York where 146 workers, 123 of them women and girls, died. The fire was during Lent in 1911 and this image was painted in 1922, but Cynthia speculated on what these factory women might be thinking in their circumstance. She lives in Maryland, US ,and writes regularly with the Driftless Writing Center based in Wisconsin. ** Faces The gaze is fixed upon the way, The way, that is ever the same, Ever open, Never showing anything beyond its emptiness, Always uncertain. The gaze stems from a teeming pool, The pool of being: Of want, Of yearning, Of wounds, Of resignation, Of nothingness. Do we hear the footfalls Of souls upon smoke? G. I. Sheriff Besides a substantial contribution over the years of poems, essays and stories to various literary journals, and anthologies, G. I. Sheriff has published two books of poetry, The Dew Between The Petals And Other Poems and One Hundred Poems Of Aesthesia. @ ghalibiqbalsheriff8314 is his YouTube channel, that features his poetry videos. He lives in Bengaluru, India. ** Homeward Bound, Unbroken Helena and Elli no longer smile. They shove their short hair beneath casket caps. Move together as comrades through dark Finnish streets. Weary with fatigue from factory fires, painstaking handiwork. Their ghostly faces hide their fierce determination, their willingness to fight for a better world. Silent women, unafraid of sacrifice, unafraid of the world’s cold treatment. Barbara Edler Barbara Edler is a midwestern poet who enjoys writing poetry and flash fiction. She appreciates the challenge of writing to art and the bi-weekly challenges offered by The Ekphrastic Review. Her poem "Homeward Bound, Unbroken" is a nod to the Finnish women who were unafraid to break established gender roles and worked fearlessly to create a better world. Edler's poetry has been published in a variety of anthologies such as Encore Prize Poems 2025, The Cities of the Plains, Words that Mend and a variety of literary journals. ** Soul Sisters For years we walked. Together. Holding each other. Secure. One night this tall, bald strange man stared at you through the window of her house. We grabbed two knives, stood ready behind the door. We kissed two boys under the oleander bushes at the Costa Brava. We took many trains, we left our hurts in each other’s arms. We shared a suitor, our mothers... I stood stiffly at the dance, while she took his hand and sailed into the Foxtrot, whispered later behind her manicured hand that he got too close. Many a night we sipped champagne and giggled until the first light. We solved the world’s problems. Bitched about our brothers. Got old together. At first, I didn’t notice: she faded slowly, her mind curled in on itself. But she always knew that I had somehow been a part of her. Rose Mary Boehm Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels, short stories, eight poetry collections and one chapbook, her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She is a several times Pushcart and a Best of Net nominee. All her books are available on Amazon. Her chapbook, The Matter of Words, was published in June 2025, and a new full-length collection has been slated for publishing at any day now. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/ ** A Sabot Story Liege, in the 19th century industrial revolution That region famous for its coal, iron and steel Known as Europe’s Forge, and a beating heart Its industry as a participant in an age of steam Belgium, at the south end of a long coal seam Where labour unions joined in that early start In hard working jobs having a lessening appeal With silent compliance ever the poor solution Coal mining, exclusively as a male occupation Not revolt, and with safety first and foremost But many women also played their silent role In factories, at machines making ammunition Another early shift before the sun had risen And as the story goes, sabotage was the goal A clog in the machine, in reality, not a ghost As silent female resistance, never capitulation Howard Osborne Howard is a UK citizen, retired. Published author of non-fiction reference book, scientific papers and poetry. Interests mainly creative writing (poetry, novel, short stories, songs and scripts), music and travel. ** … brazier glow … an undisclosed hour on a waking morning unidentifiable from any dim indistinct signs around which the cold mist mixes with brazier smoke disturbed to swirl by passing shapes becoming human forms as if emerging from the darker night wearing muted colours of orange and lilac two human forms distinguishable from the churn only by their lighter faces— sombre faces facing the day ahead scarfed heads bobbed against the cold one a jaundice yellow the other a ghostly white eyes sunken shadows in skull sockets adding to an incorporeal look of phantasma eyes tired by shortness of sleep— like a shortness of breath even before exertion theirs is a hard pill to swallow as they wend an already weary way to work in the cold dark broken by the brazier they pass often not seeing light of day as they toil behind factory doors or underground returning after sundown with their burden of weariness weighing on shoulders that have already weighed heavily upon their souls the warming glow of a brazier barely felt barely noticed even if from one of Dante’s hells into which they might be about to descend hoping to have the preserve from which they can ascend to return to their normality passing the brazier once more as its heat through the harsh weave of the garments thinning at the neck Peter Longden Peter R Longden grew up in Rotherham, South Yorkshire before moving to Coventry in 1981 for a long career working with young people. Now retired, poetry is a significant part of his life, having started writing poetry over 25 years ago. Still looking to publish a first chapbook, he has had poems published in Yesterday’s Diary. edited by Cathy Cassidy; by 9th O’Bheal Five Words Competition (2022); five poems published by The Ekphrastic Review between June 2024 and May 2026; and two ekphrastic poems in the Wee Sparrow Poetry Press Newsletters in 2024 and 2025. Other poems have been published in local anthologies. Peter is married to Sally with two grown-up boys (and a two-year-old granddaughter). ** ...but Deadly (a Guide to Mimes) 1. Mimes have silence on their side. In a fight, this can cost you. 2. I’m not implying that mimes are dirty fighters. But heckle them at your own risk. After you yell, “Oh, no, I’m trapped inside an invisible box! How will I ever get out?” don’t turn your back. You won’t hear them coming. 3. When you see a mime, walk away, into the wind, dragging your heavy sack of sarcasm behind you. Find something, anything, real or imagined, to lean against. But don’t piss off a mime. 4. Yesterday you delighted in making that street magician’s composure vanish into thin air. If you’re still itching for fun, and you can’t be dissuaded from antagonizing a mime, get ready. Mimes see the world in black and white. If you impugn their honour, you’re asking for it. 5. Remember, first and foremost, mimes are performers. Acrobats of the dramatic. You may throw a haymaker, maybe blacken a mime’s eye. But watch, while you can, as that mime uses an invisible grapefruit spoon. To scoop out your very real eyes. Tracy Royce Tracy Royce’s writing has appeared in The Mackinaw, MacQueen’s Quinterly, ONE ART, and Best Microfiction. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and a Pushcart Prize. She lives in Southern California, where she enjoys hiking and watching Richard Widmark films. Find her on Bluesky. ** when the work stops - click clack - slanted back stiff walk slow marching in a day hardly worth waking sorrowed eyes pale skin our bodies theirs our minds ripe for taking - knock knock - striking nails dyed skin palm bleeding on my boot so mad I’m shaking clenching fists numb arm stomp aching feet “enough, tools down” I call out - tik tok - dropping awls raised hands the guards come in “bring us the owner” we all shout the man enters smug smile pink slips waiting brows set we test his clout Alexandra Fritz Alexandra Fritz is based in Los Angeles and roams whenever possible. Inspired by social justice and the complications of being human, her work searches for dignity in difficult circumstances and the moments that reveal our shared humanity. ** The Visitation It wasn’t the first time that Maura had felt Cindy, although she couldn’t see her, and tried to look away and pretend it was just in her mind. It was the coldness of the air that could not be ignored. Brushing against her left cheek, she could feel its icy grasp as if pulling her into the other world as well. It wasn’t her fault that Cindy died, although she felt guilty. She had been the passenger, and Cindy had been the one driving when the car went over the bank on a perfectly beautiful morning in the hills of Tennessee. “What do you want, Cindy? I know you are there. It has been two years now, and I think you should move on. Are you stuck?” Cindy’s unrelenting pressure campaign echoed the tone she had also used when confronting Mother. “What the hell, Mother! We have been out here in the rain ever since the bus dropped us off three hours ago.” Maura remembers they pounded on the door and could see their mother moving in the kitchen. Cindy charged almost aggressively toward her Mom when the door finally opened, and Maura ran crying to her room and put on her headphones. “You girls are lucky to have me for a mother, teaching you responsibility. Maybe next time you will remember to take your house key and not depend on me to open the door. I am not your servant.” With that, she turned and disappeared into the kitchen. Maura shook her head to dislodge this memory and sat down on the couch to stare out the window. Lake Michigan was so still this morning that the clouds looked like they were swimming in the icy water. Gazing at the horizon line always transported her to a frequency where she could talk with Cindy more clearly in her mind. “I am not stuck. Ever since Dad walked out of our lives 23 years ago when I was 5, and you were 3, I have tried to be strong for you. To be your protector. I see you squandering your life by shrinking until you are now invisible even to yourself. I want to wake you up. Do you think it is okay that Mom murdered me and tried to kill you too? Please, Maura, find your voice.” They had discussed Mother many times since the accident. It seemed plausible that she had known the brakes were defective when she told Cindy to take her car, instead of Cindy’s Volkswagen. It would have seemed forgivable, innocent even, except that Mother hated Cindy for defying her controlling demands from an early age. “You will have more room if you take my car,” were the last words her mother spoke to Cindy. At the time, it seemed odd because why would Mother care if there was more room, but Maura shook it off like she always did. This hatred between Mom and Cindy was a looming presence that inhabited their home and interjected itself in every conversation, every interaction. A toxic poison spewed continuously from Mother’s mouth, except when she talked to the neighbors in that silky voice that arose from her red lipsticked mouth. After the accident, when Maura was recovering from a broken pelvis and a crushed leg, her mother visited her twice in the two months she was in the hospital. The first time was to ask her where she should dump Cindy’s ashes, and the next time to tell her she was moving to the Netherlands. Good riddance, she thought at the time. These repeating conversations with Cindy were upsetting. She wanted Maura to confront her mother. It was like Cindy could see she had become a hermit, living in this cabin by the lake, working remotely as a grant writer for a non-profit, ordering takeout, and binge-watching Netflix movies. Her only interactions were scrolling through Instagram and liking and commenting on strangers' posts. Maura knew it was dangerous to be visible. Staring out the plane window, Maura relived her conversation with her mother,. She had hired a private detective who tracked down her mother’s address to a small Dutch village. The detective also discovered that the investigation into the accident had focused on the car's faulty brakes, and the police were beginning to question her mother. Somehow, with Cindy's help, she had found a desire to discover the truth and, with trepidation, called the number the detective had given her. She instantly recognized the fake silky voice when her Mom answered the phone. “Hello Mother, this is Maura.” Her voice sounded stronger than she felt as the old fear gripped her. “Maura!” Maura could tell her mother was truly shocked to hear her voice. “I have a plane ticket, and I will be at your house on June 29th if all goes as planned.” “What? You are coming here? No, don’t come. Frank would not like it.” She already knew from the detective that her mother was living with Frank Barnell and that they both had moved to the Netherlands together. “I am sorry, Mom, if it makes a problem for you, but I have something very important to ask you.” This was the first time in her life that she had stood up to her mother, and it shocked both of them. “I do not intend to leave the Netherlands until we talk. We can meet at a restaurant if that works better for you.” Maura intentionally closed the door on her mother’s excuses, and it felt strangely delicious. Maura stirred her cold coffee as she waited at the cozy restaurant in Marken, the one with a view of the water. Relief and anger surged through her as she recognized her mother wasn’t coming. She should have gone to her house; she had the address. But coming here had been a first step; maybe it was enough. Cindy was sitting here with her, too, though fainter, as if she were disappearing. Connie Meyer Connie Meyer lives in Maryland with her husband, Alden, and is discovering a passion for writing after 40 years as a management consultant. She is always delighted to have new subscribers and readers of her Substack, Dispatch From Planet Earth | Connie Meyer | Substack. ** Monday Monday, the pound and hiss of mechanical melancholy stamped on their souls, birdsong broken by the clunk, snarl and whirr of the workhouse, there is no music to temper the morning trudge, their heads loll, shoes scrape pavement’s dew and glistening flecks, unseen by them, fling themselves to jewelled joy before the shadow of a sole presses them to dry death, they see nothing, they have left their thoughts resting against the plums on the kitchen table, the ruthless cry of the factory’s klaxon flattens their dreams, a thin, fading line reaching back into the folds of their sheets slackens, sleep evaporates, speech evaporates, what is there to say anyway, who could hear it beneath the iron roar, work calls, weariness calls, lives are lost in could’ves, love is absent in the daily tread, they have been soldered in the steel furnace of fierce demand, their screws loosened in the rusting of desire and the remnants of dreams smothered in the piston’s pounding, the murderous peal of stained bells There is nothing to lift their heads for, the engineer of human souls choked on the cloggy smog from the sky-scratching smokestacks, the relentless black fog, the black fog that suffocates, the black fog that stains, clouds, lungs and hope sour in a soup of blackness, what life is left when sunrise is a siren song for grim smelting release me she calls release me she cries eyes retreat, sunk in hollow despair release me she calls release me she cries the factory gates open Simon Parker Simon Parker is a writer, performer and teacher from London. He is an associate artist of Vocal Point Theatre and runs creative writing and reading groups for the homeless and socially excluded at the 240 Project. Recent poems appear in Litbreak, Cleaver, Prosetrics, The Ekphrastic Review and The Pomegranate London. More at simonparkerwriter.com ** Colleague Is that you I see, or just a memory of me? I hoped to be retired by now gone from here somehow to where the days would cease to blur into a garbled slur of tasks and meal breaks, greetings, sighs I barely recognize But leaving is impossible instead I fade to gray a crafty plan to disappear a cell or two each day My lips and nails and clothing once were bright as yours are now I’d give you energy I spent I’d hoard it for you, cent by cent if only I knew how Julia Denton Julia Denton grew up in Atlanta, Georgia and now lives in northern Virginia. She recently completed her Diploma in Creative Writing at Oxford University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in One Art, Anthophile, the Mid-Atlantic Review, the Alabama Literary Review, and elsewhere. ** The New Girl Her second week and she’s still wearing colour. Shining through wool mill dusk, her lips pout like lingonberries expecting dew. I pale beside her; my skin robbed of sunlight, rubbed thin by fume and steam. I’ll give her one week until the usual smudge-yawn palette drains her. As I work mechanically, I notice her eyes bruising, chemical dust snuffing out vision. Is she dreaming of crisp air whistling tall pines? Artists and poets? Meeting one? I see her mouth shudder as she studies my face and touches her own cheek with an inky-blue hand. Then the winch falters. Helen Freeman Helen Freeman loves poetry and art and living in Edinburgh. She has visited Finland for a niece's beautiful lakeside wedding, but has never worked in a factory. Her instagram page is @chemchemi.hf ** The Ghost of My Younger Self Has Bright Red Lips The ghost of my younger self haunted me last night. Muttering, “Remember when?” and “What about that time?” Reminding me of moments I don’t want dug up. But I know that as long as I keep them buried, ghosts will use them to drag me into nighttime recriminations. And what is it I’ve buried away? The violent husband, the lies about how the bruised cheek happened, again. Or digging even deeper into the grave of my past, the times I drove so drunk I could hardly keep my eyes open, my 11-year-old son in the seat beside me. And deeper still, the feel of the needle pricking my arm, and then the warm rush wrapping me in cotton as the heroin entered my vein. The momentary relief from the battering of the world. And under it all the constant struggle to balance mothering and working and trying to be a writer. Last night I tried again to reassure at least the ghost who wanted to be a writer, “if only there was time.” I reminded her, yes, there was still time, your whole life lay ahead. Still time to end that marriage. Still time to be a good mother, to find love for your one and only pained and aching self. Still time to push past the barriers of fear and doubt. Still time to lay the needle down and pick up the pen. Judith Yarrow Judith Yarrow has been published in two chapbooks and various literary journals over many years, most recently in The Bluebird Word, Meniscus, Raven’s Perch, and Hedgerow. She lives in Seattle, WA. Find more of her work at jyarrow.com. ** Second to my dear friend Liza M. S. They called me the second wife. But in the factory’s spent air there was no first, no second, only repeats. She stood beside me, an earlier version still cooling in the mould. The press was run again until likeness passed for order. I began to see how a face is overwritten how absence arrives already duplicated. We learned not to notice fatigue: days given, shaped, to return thinner. I looked at her and could not tell which of us had been first, only that neither of us was finished. The belt did not pause. His gaze – a stamped instruction calling each of us by a name cut near enough. Our hands kept working after meaning had left them. And when we tried to leave, we did not leave we only moved down the line past him, past us, into the same outline still being made unnamed. Angela Segredaki Angela Segredaki holds a CW degree from Oxford University and loves poetry, flowers, and people. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Blue Unicorn, The Ekphrastic Review, New Lyre, Amsterdam Quarterly, Mouthful of Salt, The Adelaide Literary Magazine, Lighten Up Online, The Dawntreader, Snakeskin, The HyperTexts and elsewhere. She’s currently collaborating with the American Oxonian poet Julia Denton, on a joint poetry collection. ** Fantasies I wish to invent a future, one for you, and for me, to travel amongst the blanket facades and fall into disrepair or, like our glass eyes left wanting to the music, create havoc become an ocean of ideas, trained on one becoming; to wash this world with ink and let it dry in the moon, let everyone in on the secret, and inject passion into their loins, to echo, to sing, to play the fool to the delight of all that exists in the frozen faces in the mirror, and watch it smash into fragments, shimmer as it turns us all into beauty. Zachary Thraves Zachary Thraves is a writer and performer. His poems have been published by Broken Sleep Books, Juste Millieu, Nitrogen House, Asylum Magazine and at Poetry Worth Hearing, as well as contributing to The Ekphrastic Review. His plays have been performed in competitions and festivals across the country; in 2023 he created a one-man fringe show exploring his experience with bi-polar, and in the same year won best actor for portraying Charles Dickens. Zac also co-hosts a podcast. He lives with his partner in East Sussex. Find him on Bluesky @28hary.  Lake Keitele, by Akseli Gallen-Kallela (Finland) 1905 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 Lake Keitele, by Akseli Gallen-Kallela. Deadline is July 3, 2026. 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. Scroll down to donate $5CAD (about $3.75 USD). 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY. Send your work to [email protected]. 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 Gallen-Kallela 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, JULY 3, 2026. 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.  Utopian Buildings, by Wenzel Hablik (Czechia) 1922 Home Sweet Ohm When Candy Land was first switched on And neon slithered through, The Gum Drop Mountain Passes shone In streaks of mauve and blue; The canes of sprouting Peppermint Bloomed scarlet, gold, and green, While Lollies gained a luscious tint Of juiced-up tangerine. The crooked House of Gingerbread Burst out with rosy swirls, The Ice Cream Floats lit up and spread Like stars for boys and girls, And all it needed was a game With somebody to play; And yet, since the Reactor came, The kids have kept away. Julia Griffin Julia Griffin has published in some online poetry magazines including The Ekphrastic Review. ** A Walk in a Park Told to walk in a park for our health and our spirits, we entered a city where skyscrapers grew toward the clouds and the sounds of the crowds were like wind in a forest, where we walked through a garden abloom with cafes, fragrant with coffee, blazing with colours of doorways and walkways, where fountains in circles gave us respite and healing, and lifted our spirits like a walk in a park. Donna Reiss Writer, editor, teacher, bookmaker, and mixed media/paper artist, Donna lives in Greenville, South Carolina, where she is a member of the Greenville Center for Creative Arts, the Guild of American Papercutters, and the Poetry Society of South Carolina. Follow her on Instagram @dreissart ** Well-Meant Steve clenched his jaw, wondering how many more people would assure him, “At least she’s not suffering anymore.” It was the crummiest consolation prize in the Kingdom of Cancer. The surgeons had pared Janie away bit by bit; the treatments had left her feeling enervated and had brought on a host of new horribles. At the end, the woman who used to race him up to the top of the mountain lacked the breath to trek to the restroom unaided. Now she wasn’t suffering. Because she wasn’t doing or feeling anything anymore. He stood, enduring the conga line of condolences, because that’s what you did after you buried your wife of thirty years, and here came one of Janie’s old co-workers. This time he was offered another all-time favorite: “She’s in a better place now.” He willed his head to nod, stretched his mouth into a thin-lipped smile. A better place, as though Janie was reclining on satin sheets in a five-star hotel instead of in a satin-lined casket. They all meant well, he knew. But he wished people would just say, “I’m sorry for your loss,” maybe offer a hug or arm-squeeze, leave it at that. Not try to spin this saddest of happenings into something positive, or at least something less dreadful. He watched them trail off, cluster together, away from the dead woman’s husband, and their faces softened as they talked. They belonged to a brighter world, a world of colour. As he saw another mourner approach he retreated in his mind to a place where he didn’t have to comfort these comforters, a corner where he could shroud himself in grey. Tracy Royce Tracy Royce’s writing has appeared in The Mackinaw, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and ONE ART. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and a Pushcart Prize, and was selected for Best Microfiction (2026). She lives in Southern California, where she enjoys hiking and watching Richard Widmark films. Find her on Bluesky. ** Through a Crystal Ball, Darkly Metropopo, the city that never sleeps! It's President's Day in the month of Reaganuary, 2127, and this city has never looked finer. Buildings sport colourful frontages, reflecting a style popular around the fin de siècle, a quarter of a century earlier. President Jenner III, the latest life-sovereign from the Vance-Jenner-Swift dynasty, has decreed that the continent of NorAm use this schema for festivities throughout 2127. Their brood-sibling President Swift IV went Rococo for Eurolands, while their senior sibling, Vance Vance Jr, is trying a whole new thing in Afrikka, called Eclectico-Moderne. No-one knows what's happening in the major block of Indo-Sino-Rossiya since they went zero-dark-ten back in 2110 after the Sekmaca pandemic. Their only visible activities are the more or less constant rockets shuttling back and forth to the ports on the ISR half of the moon, and, for those bothering to look, other rockets they send farther into space. Back in Metropopo, Dadsi Manny and their son Lil Manny have ventured onto the streets. On the corner of Musk and Crypto they survey the tall Royal Blue Tower, symbolising the latest in virtual construction. Both wear fashionable looks-maxxed jagged angular faces and matching unikloth outfits. Just like horses and carriages before them, all mechanical street vehicles are long gone. Mass transit runs underground for any who need it and on special occasions like today a few pedestrians are granted permission to visit the streets. President Jenner III doesn't want the artistic merit of the civic landscape littered with private individuals' interpretations of fashion, marring the beauty of their vision, albeit one realised through machine intelligence and botserf labour. With unlimited energy and infinite resources the mechanisms of society have almost done away with the need for private individuals anyway. A few linger, pets almost, within the superstructure of culture and society. The ruling class, a small elite, traded huge financial bets with each other, to the extent that counting wealth became pointless, and the regular Joe's existence was priced out entirely. Still, a few heritage humans here and there add a little nostalgia=feel, hence the presence of Dadsi and Lil Manny in the scene. Despite their curtailed existence they show every sign of appreciation of president Jenner III's vision. They had better, or else. Emily Tee Emily Tee is a writer from the UK Midlands. She particularly enjoys ekphrastic writing and has had work published in The Ekphrastic Review's challenges previously. Her recent work appears in A Blot from the Blue, Poetry Scotland and The Madrid Review as well as Wild Roots, an anthology from The Nuthatch Press raising funds for the UK bird conservation charity, RSPB. ** The Door My Mother Left Open Wenzel is six when he looks into the crystal—castles inside the stone, mountains made of light. He spends fifty years trying to build his way back in. I am six when Goono arrives, patient as soft summer weather, never bored, his voice something I hear and feel at the same time, a frequency the body knows before the mind finds words for it– others say imaginary friend, spirit guide. My mother has Baa. She leaves the door open. I walk through it every morning. School makes Goono fainter. Not gone. He learns to travel lighter -- moves into Benjamin, the cats, the crows who come each morning because I ask them to. Magic with an unexpected persistence, still waiting for the next child who knows how to look. Now, I stand before Hablik’s painting -- electric chaos, rainbows, stars, an architectural drawing done by an artist on LSD —and underneath, a blueprint: the world as a six-year-old sees it, with the benefits of being grown. Some things crack you open early and spend a lifetime keeping you that way. Lynne Kemen Lynne Kemen is the author of Shoes for Lucy (SCE Press, 2023) and More Than a Handful (Woodland Arts Editions, 2020). Her work has appeared in One Art, The Ekphrastic Review, MacQueen's Quinterly, and elsewhere. She received a 2024 Pushcart Prize nomination and serves as Editor/Interviewer for The Blue Mountain Review. She lives and writes in an 1830s farmhouse in rural Delaware County, New York, where she shares her property with a murder of crows, one of whom she has named Edgar Allen Crow. ** Returning It’s not the home we leave but the utopia we allow while away creating space between our enemies and us someone stretches and pipes an electric buzz over familiar patterns aligns pots of plastic flowers melting in the glow hangs high rises over saturating and exposing stars and rainbows Until everyone's the same except for those of us who go to the extremes and burn sand into all the glass that distorts and distracts us from believing the memories we receive in the homes we can no longer see Brendan Dawson Brendan Dawson is an American poet and veteran. Brendan’s work is shaped by combat experience and military service with a focus on exploring the ethical weight of leadership and the liminal spaces during and after conflict. Brendan has published widely in literary journals and is currently completing an MFA in poetry. He is at work on a collection of poems centered on his departure from a career in the military and return to civilian life. ** Big Colourful Utopian Constructions I hold the elevator doors ajar while a nattily dressed man enters. I press the close door button once he reaches the back centre. “You know,” he says. “That’s a dummy.” I pull my hand back, “What?” “It’s there to make you feel better.” I ride down with my mouth shut. Our corporate grey building should include more placebos I think as we descend, and this is where my mind goes: Praise for a lofty atrium flooded with colour and light. Praise for five massive stars tumbling up out of sight. Praise for bridges of rainbows that lead to nowhere at all. Praise for radiant dreams pouring in a prismatic waterfall. Praise for Guzmania flowers that flame like giant torches. Praise for columns and poles and whimsical midair porches. Then with a gentle thunk the car we’re in levels and lands, and though my vision has vanished respair and serenity stand. Lara Dolphin A descendant of immigrants, Lara Dolphin lives with her family among the Allegheny Mountains of Central Pennsylvania on the ancestral land of the Susquehannock/Iroquois people. She has written three chapbooks In Search Of The Wondrous Whole, Chronicle Of Lost Moments, and At Last a Valley. She, like countless others, hopes for a world filled with greater peace. ** The Night the Stars Fell "Hublik's 'Creative Forces' were etchings portraying a voyage through an imaginary universe of crystalline structures representing the accomplishments of his career." Timothy O. Benson et al., Expressionist Utopias, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2001; p. 210. Wikipedia Drawings of the war were ink-black & white, leached of the colours of nature as if the dark-cloaked figure of Elektra had convinced the artist that paternal love existed in temples and flying cities. When he spoke of The Great Depression, he told her it was, to him a crystalline chasm; a mirror reflection of inner reality -- the blinding hues of his heart and soul when a Utopia was born on canvas. Even the infra-structure of the cities were neon- bright; and nestled among the colorful girders, stars became the heroes of myth -- Elektra in the arms of her lost father before war was the technology of heartbreak. Time would not stop, as time will not. The world had known Symbolism, German Expressionism and two World Wars. Now Elektra's memory of childhood was the pain she felt when two parents -- mother and father -- reached down to kiss a child on the playground faces filled with love though their pockets were empty. Why did America insist on repetition economic fluctuation so intense not everyone could survive? & why was her ancient name au courant, automotive and innovative, her name captured in electric cars? When she opened her grandfather's19th century wardrobe, she thought of Hublik first a cabinet maker; how a flapper girl's Utopia was the freedom of her grand- mother's dress, gold and silk and fringe (the kind of fabric Hublik's lady, a designer, might have used) wrapped up carefully in tissue. Words of wisdom about the origin of film came to her as her fingers touched the sheen of the past... wizards, mermaids, travelers, adventurers, magicians. Come and dream with me... If stars could fall from an aquamarine cloud cover -- though skies inevitably turn to storm -- wouldn't Utopias be washed by rivers blest by suns of home? Laurie Newendorp Honoured multiple times by The Ekphrastic Review's challenges, Laurie Newendorp is impacted by Symbolism and the Symbolists whose world prioritized dreams, the imagination, emotions and spirituality over everyday depictions of reality -- though reality be harsh, as was the horror of WWI when Rupert Booke wrote "The Soldier": "If I should die, think only this of me...There shall we in that rich earth a richer crust concealed/ Gave once her followers to love... Washed by rivers, blest by suns of home." The quote with wizards, mermaids and adventurers is from Ben Kingsley as Papa Georges in the film, Hugo Cabret. ** Face at the Edge In crystal gazing Mohs saw more, so many facets from their core, fresh angles that revealed insight to chasms, temples, city flights, for crystallography owns planes. Geology, like meteorites, here sight of dreams within these sites a spatial mystery encased, designs of architecture faced - Utopia, More satire here? Combined, these visions still must stand, planned building founded, rock not sand; a full palette, designer ware, metropolis, artistic flair, Bohemian by birth, no more. Stephen Kingsnorth Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review. He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com ** Joy on Paper Joyful joyful! With his set of draftsman’s pens, architect, Hablik has created a paper city, two dimensional only, sadly, full of strong straight lines, enhanced with nested shapes and curves reflecting his art deco passion. It’s as though heaven settled on his city, stars perch on rooftops. The in between places are filled with light-- no dark alleys here. A summer garden’s myriad colours meet and meld with blues of summer’s varied skies. Painted, pointed structures seem ready to take off into that sky but even if they remain grounded the painting propels our viewing eyes into the colors, the forms and shapes of his expressed joy. Here, inside this picture we can leave behind earth’s darkness, rest in beauty, peace, joy-- all that is necessary is for us to “pencil” ourselves, our thoughts into the scene he’s set. Joy will be ours! Joan Leotta Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. Internationally published as essayist, poet, short story writer, novelist, she’s a multiple nominee for Pushcart and Best of Net. Publications include One Art, Lothlorien, The Mackinaw, Ekphrastic Review, and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. She also performs stories for youth and adult audiences. Her story programs highlight food, family, and strong women. Presenting as Louisa May Alcott she highlights the author’s development as a writer, activism, and time as Civil War Nurse. Joan’s taught storytelling and writing, for the North Carolina Poetry Society, NC Writers Network, ND Humanities, and the London Arts-Based Research Center ** U to pi a forgotten land Think of all the wonders you might find when you fly into a colourful dream: all the colours used in the design from subdued pastels of lilac turquoise primrose yellow and jade all fade into the distance as if from memory; the mind not strong enough to hold onto them everything you puzzle over try to remember growing up growing older they’re all still there in their primary glory the mountains straddled by rainbows showing where a crock of gold must be but never was crossing great causeways of stepping stones in scarlet basalt erupting into a sky of desperate thoughts dispersed by waterfalls full of shifting blues and greens seen through eroded valleys truncated in black spurs softened by white mist that has taken hold of memory as well it might not to dwell on what you can’t find— go ahead find the next stars that cross the infirmament shooting glances in vague directions explicitly in recognition before stepping back and opening Schroeder’s box where a colourful trick might be performed in wonder and find today what’s inside is very much alive with memories before converting into the cave of indigo darkness unlit until a candle breaks through in golden spark-like stars that flame-on-orange-sunflower-white heat not to be touched nor regressed back to “don’t touch it will burn” instructions; in this colourful find, utopia doesn’t need reminding all light and dark are kind upon the eye retrieving all the commotion of the fun of the fair all the circus tent emotion and flair seen from so deep in memory that they are lost while others hope that old yellow bricks and the red swoosh on shoes might lead the feet not to ‘no place’ but to where pi equates to going a full circle and a return to home— forgotten in all but technicolour dreams Peter R Longden Peter R Longden grew up in Rotherham, South Yorkshire before moving to Coventry in 1981 for a long career working with young people. Now retired, poetry is a significant part of his life, both writing and reading. He is still looking to publish a first chapbook, having had individual poems published by 9th O’Bheal Five Words Competition (2022); two poems published by The Ekphrastic Review in 2024 and April 2026; and two ekphrastic poems in the Wee Sparrow Poetry Press Newsletters in 2024 and 2025. Other poems have been published in local anthologies. Writing poetry began over 25 years ago, recording how to see the world and what makes it the way it is. Peter is married to Sally with two grown-up boys (and a two-year-old granddaughter). ** The Blinding Lights Do Blind So you see the colourful lights the busyness the sounds of people crammed together they’re happy they say going about their day to day the buildings tall the lined lanes leading with purpose one must assume the bridges spanning necessity to extravagance but you don’t see what lies beneath the neon lights the daily lives the commerce and construction down there somewhere rests a foundation laid long before flat and solid and gray and made of sturdy stuff and the blood and bones of those who built it so this space could exist the ones who made the spires and steeples and streets and everything enjoyed by the inhabitants of this utopian infrastructure they’re happy they say but what else lies beneath the facade of glowing glass and phosphorescent fabrication things unseen because though necessary they might detract from the dazzling display and no one wants to see that Joe Coy Joe Coy (he/him) has always been fascinated by how a few words and a few lines can say so much. His poems explore themes of nature, spirituality, social and political issues, hope, love, and connection and have been selected for publication in Anomaly, Altar Literary, Epistemic Literary, and anthologies by Wandering Words and Gorgon's Gaze Press. ** Equality The agents of equilibrium are no longer passive metaphors- colors beneath this mighty architecture seek governance, wishing the eye meets the surface in ways that transform. Neural activation creates a balance between life and death. Reaction-Diffusion systems operate at the highest level. They explain everything- don't you know? Emergent structures of justice, plain as day, plain as sight: a flat surface becomes… phase space Art and ethics co-evolve, nonlinearity loops, autopoiesis breathes- the boundary holds. Suspended, complete. MWPiercy Michael W. Piercy: "At the intersection of Art, Poetry and Contradiction, you will find my work, you will find me. Observing memories and the present moment , thinking with an eye that shadows the natural world. Philosophy, Theology, and Science are core of my writing - I have found that I am a synthesizer. Managing ideas which do not always cohere. A manipulator of ideas." ** Spinning a Vision Frenzied orange lines zigzag into the sky clashing with pink, royal blue-- colors rarely set side by side. The buildings surprise me, Their lines bent, flowing forming rainbow arches which soften the field, shifting as the morning and late afternoon light burns and fades. What would a life inside these walls contain? Notes breathe from a saxophone long after sunset. A novelist charts undiscovered lands. A young mother shows her child new forms, opening paths for a growing mind. A grandmother, not quite ready to sit and rock with a cup of tea, pulls her oils out of storage-- smearing the burnt orange next to the royal blue and muddying the green just a touch To make us think: now why did she do that? Wenzel Hablik you spun these magical castles and mountains from a childhood crystal, trying to reproduce those images throughout your life. You hoped that painted surfaces would offer comfort, A place of healing and peace for those emerging from a world plunged into a war, You offered a futuristic vision, throbbing with joyful colours, if only people were brave enough to walk toward this vision, and enter. Celeste DeSario Celeste DeSario taught English at Suffolk County Community College in Brentwood, NY for 37 years. Celeste received teaching honours from SUNY and the University of Texas, and now focuses on writing her own poetry and fiction. Her recent poetry appears in The New Verse News, The Changing Times, The SportsScribe Literary Magazine, and The Ekphrastic Review. ** Observing the World Through the Fantastical Those in crystal palaces view the world in kaleidoscopic detail, each brightly tinctured prism, its pallor playful and bright, highlights an ideal existence devoid of deadly conflict. The artist begs us to focus on aesthetic optimism, he imagines his own slice of utopia as a star and rainbow paradise. Feast your eyes on reflective beauty and feel the peace within you unfold. Elaine Sorrentino Elaine Sorrentino, author of Belly Dancing in a Brown Sweatsuit (Kelsay Books, 2025) has been published in journals such asQuartet Journal, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Gyroscope Review,Sparks of Calliope, Sheila-Na-Gig, Poetry Porch, Ekphrastic Review, and Haikuniverse. She is facilitator of the Duxbury Poetry Circle in Duxbury, MA. ** After Utopian Buildings, by Wenzel Hablik Sunlight beyond bright it must to show radiance of such colour bound to future dreams of ideal where colours replace drab concrete and shout flowers joy within angles curve skyward leading us toward the love in our hearts peaceful creation of where we'll dwell in harmony within and without a dream unrealized. Daniel Warren Brown Daniel Warren Brown is a retired special education teacher who began writing poetry as a senior. At age 72 he published his first collection FAMILY PORTRAITS IN VERSE and Other Illustrated Poems through Epigraph Books, Rhinebeck, NY Daniel has been published in various journals and anthologies, most recently Jerry Jazz Musician, Chronogram Magazine and KINDS OF COOL an anthology of jazz poetry.. He has hosted a youtube channel POETRY FROM SHOOKS POND and was included in Arts Mid-Hudson's Poets Respond To Art in 2022-23. Daniel writes each day about music, art and whatever else captures his imagination. ** The Shift It’s a whole other world out here. Colours I have never seen. Bioluminescence. Or perhaps my vision has changed. For I have changed. Something intrinsic happened when I left Earth’s atmosphere. Some inner shift of matter, some casting off of skin. Everything here is dizzying motion. I search for the soul in things and instead I’m thrown back on mine. Only to question my here-and-nowness. But I am real, I was borne of Earth, I am just elsewhere. Where elsewhere is remains unclear. My chaperone has not told me. Or guide, or whatever he is. I don’t know what to call him. He is an agent of some kind. Humanoid. But not human. Another race. Tall, albino-fair, with skin that’s sparkling or scaly. I haven’t seen him in full light yet, or a light I can call earthly. I almost lose my footing in this realm. The walls keep shifting, as does the ground beneath me. My sense of balance is dashed. As if I have sea legs. Sea of tranquillity legs. Except I’m not tranquil. Neither am I agitated. If I had to give it a name, it would be disassociated. For what may have been a long time – time? what even was that here? there was only the moment, the assault of the senses – I stand before a spinning wheel of rainbow persuasion as four-dimensional stars pop and gather. I come to realise they are entities of their own with a consciousness that is different to mine. They buzz around my head as if examining me and make a high-pitched whining as they zip to and fro. My, God, the spectacle of this place! It is an endless morphing. My mind is adrift with the strangeness. I am grappling both with my new vision and sights I have never seen. It is like being stuck in some unearthly arcade, one which offers a promise of joy but is really just an elaborate trompe l’oeil. There’s that word again – unearthly. How can I not compare everything to my Mother? And this place is like being utterly present within a psychedelic trip of multiplicitous dimensions that my brain is trying to fathom. As if I am more liquid than solid and close to fainting – My chaperone catches me. I stare up into the deepest eyes I have ever seen. No whites, just a blue ocean. Like portals. I am lost all over again. He seems to know how I’m feeling, it is something his race can do. He averts his gaze. You’ll get used to it, he telepaths. It’s a lot to take in, I understand. When do I go back to Earth? I ask. I don’t like it here. He looks at me with a small, sad smile and says nothing. Which answers my question. But why? I am bewildered. Caught in the bewilderness of a terrifying, new reality. Earth is no longer the home you once knew, he tells me. Because he knows I only want the truth. I feel the grief of this but at a distance, as if I am examining the thought in mid-air. I know I’ll feel the tearing within later, and I would rather delay that. For my heart will know it is broken. Wherever I am, I will always be Earth Child. Estranged. For Earth had been besieged as I left, from all sides. War had broken out, like nothing humanity had ever known. And as I was torn from the atmosphere of my Mother in the ship that had materialised out of nowhere in the smoke-thick night, I could see the fire, the endless fire, so much fire. New races had arrived, non-human, and they meant us harm, had wreaked a savage havoc. But there were others too who had intervened, who looked like the man-creature I was with, and they had stolen us away. Those who hadn’t perished. And it had been a cacophony of screams and explosions, and a deafening unmaking of all that was whole and good. I could not think of Earth as a dead planet, I could not. It could not be true. I switch off the memory and file it away. I can’t deal with it right now. Maybe this is all a dream. Maybe I could ask my guide to help me believe this is all a dream and that I will one day return to Earth. My heart needed the lie, if only for a while. He seems to sense my disorder for he makes a valiant attempt to distract me. Let me show you the Solaris Dynamo, he telepaths. I think you’ll like it. I have no idea what he means but I think he means well. And then I am filled with a sudden longing for the ocean. Oh, Earth. Is there an aquarium? I ask. He smiles and says nothing. Kindly, or maybe it’s just the way he is programmed, he waits until I am ready before we move on. For I am not moving in a way that makes sense, my feet are not on the ground. Rather, I am hovering and able to move by the power of thought alone. Tell me something true, I say, as we move through the new realm. Tell me something real and good. He turns to me and is silent for a time. You are real and good, he says. And you are safe with me. Nina Nazir Nina Nazir (she/her) is a neurodivergent British Pakistani poet, writer and fine artist based in Birmingham, UK. She has been widely published online and in print. You can usually find her surrounded by books, making art or putting one word in front of the other. You can also find her on Instagram: @nina.s.nazir or www.ninasnazir.substack.com where she regularly shares poetry, art and book reviews. ** If Fritz Lang Had Consulted Wenzel Hablik At the Cafe Arco, they’d remark on the variegated tones of wet cobblestone. The pink chicken served on Vltava river cruises. The rainbow over Charles Bridge connecting Old Town with Mala Strana. The golem, ready to rise from the Altneu Synagogue, hands raised to wreak havoc if summoned. The spiked spires of Town Hall and St. Vitus. The astronomical clock in Old Town Square. Kafka’s motorbike navigating the circumference of his own rotating metallic head in New Town. Lang would lament the oppression of his workers. Hablik would offer them balance in his new utopia. Together with writer Karel Čapek’s creation of the word robot, they could construct this utopia together. Lang would insist on Metropolis in colour. Barbara Krasner Film buff Barbara Krasner majored in German language and literature. She spent a month in Prague on a fiction fellowship in 2011 and visited all of Kafka's haunts while studying the Czech language. She wrote about her Czech experiences in Pounding Cobblestone (Kelsay Books, 2018). Visit her website at www.barbarakrasner.com. ** What I Realize Now When I was eighteen, I took a few hits of LSD to boost my high on hash oil, beer, and pot, but looking now at Hablik’s psychedelic worlds, I realize no drug trip holds half the wonderment of an artist’s unleashed imagination. Take, for instance, the big colourful stars in his painting, Utopian Buildings, that float around rainbows of a dozen hues, and the kaleidoscopic mazes that lead to mind-altering avenues with no exits; or the flowers with eyes and pointy crowns on oblong tables that form intoxicating patterns on unpopulated streets. Hallucinogenic striata to the left and right of arches mix with crystalline tunnels that lead to fading walls or to a mauve sky, like what the visionary saw above the peaks on his solitary treks up the slopes of the Alps. And about that drug trip of mine -- the way it ended: two guys saw me swinging around a city street sign pole and offered help. They took me to a rehab centre, and I’ve stayed clean and sober for forty-nine years. Gregory E. Lucas Gregory E. Lucas writes fiction and poetry. His short stories and poems have appeared in Sparks of Calliope. Rue Scribe, Blueline, and elsewhere. He lives on Hilton Head Island, in South Carolina. Follow him on X.com @GregoryELucas. ** where bad cities go to die, that’s where I’ll be the rainbow will take you by the hand on that day when the buildings will reveal their colours you will wake up, and the sun will be a disco ball your language will explode into seventeen cases, dative and inessive giggling in delight technicolor falcons will swallow those new words today you see the clammy rain of suffocating Wednesday afternoons in August today you stir too much sugar into your espresso, then let it go cold today your pants stick to a brown plastic chair and you feel embarrassed when getting up today concrete is grey, the graffiti half washed out, the train seats cracked and tired but you dreamed the rainbow will take you by the hand on that day when the buildings will reveal their colours and you still hope Eva Lantsoght Eva Lantsoght is a multilingual poet from Belgium, who lives in the Netherlands and Ecuador. Her work has appeared in Katern, Museum de Mindere, De Optimist, Spillwords, Hesiodos Flow Fest, has been awarded with the Soetendaele poetry prize and Harelbeke poetry prize, and is forthcoming in Eunoia Review. ** The Commission “I expect you to paint a magnificent picture of my utopian city,” the client said to me. I didn’t respond. No matter how many times I encountered a self-important client, I struggled to be polite. So, where possible, I spoke little. “Well?” the client said. “You paint pictures of buildings, which are then hung in their lobbies, don’t you? I’m told such art is popular. Are you hesitating to do what I ask because I want a painting of not just one building but the entirety of the wonderful city I’ve constructed?” I took a deep breath and said, “I accept the commission.” And when the client turned and strode away, I muttered, “Let us hope we never have to meet again.” Afterwards, on the way to the airport and my flight home, I asked the taxi driver to stop. I intended to return soon with my paraphernalia of brushes, oil paints, easel and canvas; first, though, I wanted to look again at this city that had appeared so quickly in what had been a wilderness. As I stared, I found it impossible to distinguish between the living accommodation, offices and factories. Surely the client is delusional, I reflected, when he describes this place as utopian? That word–utopian– stayed with me. Once back in my studio, I consulted my books on art and found a reproduction of Ambrosius Holbein’s 1516 depiction of Thomas More’s Utopia. In this woodcut of an imaginary, flawless island, I could see no people other than a sailor on a ship. This is intriguing, I thought. Is the sailor approaching the apparently deserted island and viewing it with apprehension? If so, is Holbein suggesting that no one can, or should, live in a so-called utopia? At this precise moment, my phone pinged. I had a message from the client’s executive assistant: Ensure that in your painting of our city you have people gazing at the buildings in wonder. That would certainly be different to Holbein, I thought and continued to leaf through my books. Before long, I came across Wenzel Hablik’s 1922 vision of utopian constructions. For several hours, I studied and admired the colours and shapes. Then I reflected upon my career and body of work. Some months later, I met the client’s executive assistant in the lobby of the tallest building in the new city. “You took your time,” the executive assistant said. “My boss likes things done quickly. So, where’s the painting?” I gestured towards a bubble-wrapped canvas propped against a wall. “Do I have to arrange for it to be hung?” the executive assistant said. “Not my job.” The executive assistant sighed. “Okay, you can go. Send me your invoice.” I never received payment for the painting. Between them, Holbein and Hablik had inspired me to use colours and forms that bore no relation to the client’s utopian city. I also omitted people. No further corporate commissions have ever come my way. I don’t miss them. Instead, my imagination guides me. K. J. Watson K. J. Watson’s stories and poems have appeared on the radio; in comics, magazines and anthologies; and online. ** Metamorphoses It takes only a century for a shy lean utopia to turn into a loud obese dystopia. A mere geometric nightmare is mirrored as skyscrapers en masse (whatever that means) dominating even fleeting rainbows. Right-full-of-themselves angles cut myriads of oval apples in accord multiplying the mythical discord. Madly leaping army of lines cris-cross the foreground in an instance while crazy colors compete to better blindfold the perspective – indeed – what is mutating real is a bedazzled world sans human horizon sans divine heaven – you can neither fly not shut the missing sky to the advancing globally dancing skeletal utopia turning corpulent dystopia. Ekaterina Dukas Ekaterina Dimitrova writes poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning. Her poems are often honoured by The Ekphrastic Review and its challenges. Her collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europa Edizioni, 2021. ** Explosion of Colours This is what I feel Colorful words that explode While I am writing Jean Bourque. Jean lives in Montreal. For him, writing is like painting.  Factory Workers on the Way to Work, by Helene Schjerfbeck (Finland) 1922 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 Factory Workers on the Way to Work, by Helene Schjerfbeck . Deadline is June 19, 2026. 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. Scroll down to donate $5CAD (about $3.75 USD). 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY. Send your work to [email protected]. 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 Schjerfbeck 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, June 19, 2026. 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. |
Challenges
|
