  Transmogrification, by Donna-Lee Smith (Canada) contemporary Donna-Lee Smith is one of The Ekphrastic Review's faithful challenge contributors. She has been submitting her writing since 2022. Her contribution to the Nine Lives Marathon in 2024 is beautiful in words, as well as in imagery: she matched up her own face with the art prompt from the marathon. You can see these photos @ https://www.instagram.com/donna__lee__smith/. Donna-Lee enjoys working as a model, and to add to the mixture of creativity, she enjoys shaping impressive and varied artwork. Her black and white images are today's ekphrastic challenge. Looking forward to reading your writing!
be well, Kate Copeland ** Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. The prompt this time is Transmogrification, by Donna-Lee Smith. Deadline is May 23, 2025. 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, May 23, 2025. 9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is. 10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 15. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages! 16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.
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 The Birdcage, by Harue Koga (Japan) 1924  Anita Nahal Dr. Anita Nahal is a professor, poet, children's books writer, recent novelist and a very recent short film maker. Finalist, Tagore Literary Prize, 2023, for her ekphrastic prose poetry poetry book, Kisses at the espresso bar and nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize (22, 23), Anita won the 2024 Nissim Prize for Excellence in Literature for her poetry-prose novel, drenched thoughts. Her third prose poetry collection, What’s wrong with us Kali women?, is mandatory reading at Utrecht University. Her first under three minute very short film, “Clubs my sinful dance muse,” won the best super short film at the Five Continents International Film Festival, Venezuela (August 2024). A Fulbright and NEH scholar, she teaches at a university in Washington DC. www.anitanahal.com ** Leda’s Naked in a Cage and Zeus Is Locked Out She’s pale as the moon, trying to look composed as she crosses her legs, the god-as-Cygan having driven her to lunacy. Some would think it was love but nothing’s set in concrete. More like water, circulating through pipes and filters until justice and pH both balance and the scales show some sort of clarity. Sibelius wouldn’t be out of place here. Even if Lemminkäinen had a bow and not an erection, there’s still a swan in the story—a divine one, since swans don’t sing and this one has an English horn for a voice box, sighing lonely and seductive. Change the setting and it’s Zeus to a tee, Leda on shore and the god swan-downed and randy. I’m in a birdcage, she realizes as she perches, looking upwards toward where the bars meet. Outside, a red flower grows. To her eyes, it’s a camellia. To her heart, it’s a red spider lily, Lycoris radiate, the flower of the afterlife, the hell flower. Leda imagines the flower’s long thin petals curving back like spider legs, spreading across fields on either side of a foot path to the River Styx. Try finding a swan there in place of Charon’s barge. Tuonela’s waters are similarly dusky but the Styx is more like black ice, slushy and freezing, or so she was told as a child. Those red spider lilies might as well spin webs, she thinks, trapped like prey in isolation as the fields stretch forever, the air growing chilly on her skin. Leda’s trapped and knows it, whether imagining herself walking or snapping back to being perched inside this cage. She sits on a hope chest in farewell mode, wanting to uncross her legs but not wanting to feel cold air rush cold between them and remind her of who’s not coming back. She knows both the lily’s leaves and this train of thought are toxic, but she can’t help picking at the leaves or riding down a mine shaft of regret, caged like the canary people watch to make sure the air hasn’t gone bad. She knows she’s doomed to suffocate in full view of everyone around her. Jon Yungkans Jonathan Yungkans continues typing at odd hours of the night as he listens to owls hoot and watches yet another skunk amble under his house's foundation. He remains thankful when his writing is less noxious than the creature hiding beneath the bathroom's floorboards. His work has appeared in NOON: journal of the short poem, MacQueen's Quinterly, Sonic Boom, Synkroniciti and other publications. He has also written three poetry chapbooks. The latest, The Ravens Will Arrive Later, is scheduled for release in 2026 from Gnashing Teeth Publishing. ** The Caged Woman Demands Immediate Release Gadgets and widgets, circular shapes, soft versus hard lines, water and bricks, build a montage, frame a workbench like space. Tranquil light eases the still-life’s cage. Curves serve as mirrors in this surreal pic of gadgets and widgets, circular shapes. The patchwork of colour, rose, aqua, and jade, join ochre and rust as the contrast and mix build a montage, frame a workbench like space. Opposites animate the machinal array where living things change the surface of slick gadgets and widgets, circular shapes. The swans, nude, and blossom alter the scape, illustrate wonder as their forms affix to this photomontage, workbench like space. Technique repeats in a mechanized way where soft versus hard lines avail a mix of gadgets, widgets, and circular shapes that build a montage, frame a workbench like space. Jeannie E. Roberts Jeannie E. Roberts is the author of nine books, including her most recent full-length poetry collection On a Clear Night, I Can Hear My Body Sing (Kelsay Books, 2025). She is an Eric Hoffer and a two-time Best of the Net award nominee. A Midwesterner with degrees in secondary education (B.S.) and arts management (M.A.), she divides her time between Minnesota and Wisconsin. She finds joy drawing, taking walks, photographing nature, and spending time with loved ones. ** Perfect Measurements She was expected to perform like a bird looking for a mate. She had read that only male birds danced and begged for attention. The males were flashy, but the females made all the decisions. She wondered if this is what separated humans from birds. The requirement from men that women look perfect and submit to their fathers and husbands. The doorman gave her powders for her face, lotions for her limbs, and rouge for her lips. “You must look sensational.” Off stage, she dreamed of the world beyond the bars. She painted flowers and free birds from distant memory; the outside world she grasped onto dearly had become but a ghost in her mind. She chose to believe the whirring machines in this storage room were musical instruments. The storage room was her own private ballroom. The dust was like glitter, and the dripping mouldy ceiling was a woven tapestry. She remembered dances she had watched as a young girl. Ballet, she believed it was called. Swan Lake. She couldn’t recall the premise but imagined herself a girl who had become a swan fluttering about her confines, longing to feel the water beneath her wings. Maybe a bird out there had become a woman, knees bent, head bowed, arms deep in suds or bread dough. The men would come and ogle her as she danced trance-like in her cage. They handed the doorman wads of cash on their way in, money she’d never see again. They sat on chairs in a semi-circle around the stage she’d get wheeled out onto nightly. A spectacle. Occasionally, she was allowed some clothing, a feather boa or a fur coat, but was always expected to shed it before the performance ended. “They’re here to see your perfect body, the rarity of your 36-24-36 measurements, the perfect perkiness of your breasts, the pearly smoothness of your legs, and the luxurious black silk of your hair. You are a mythical creature. These men have wives who could never be you. Mediocre wives with straight waists, straw-coloured hair, and flat bottoms. You are their dream. You fulfil their fantasies,” the doorman said one time, wheeling her back to the storage room. Some of the men tried to touch her. They’d leap from their seats and rush the stage, arms jabbing through the bars, pinching her unblemished arms and the tender flesh of her breasts. The doorman would tear them away. He never tried to touch her. Maybe she was too fragile for him to touch. He didn’t want to mar her. Maybe she would always be unattainable. Once, the doorman’s nephew, who sometimes helped clean the stage or bring her food, had said that her vestal nature was a key attraction for these men. She didn’t understand what that meant. The boy gave her books to read, so he brought her one on the natural bonds between man and woman, explaining her sacred duty and that of her womb. The cover bore the image of a lily unfurled. He smiled impishly at her horror. She had always felt a level of shame around her body and the way the men inspected her like a prized goose. Now, she realised she was exactly that. Before bed, she would stare at the boarded-up window in the corner. What was beyond? Sometimes, a halo of light seeped through the gaps. She remembered what the sun felt like. A warm hug. But not once did she consider sliding her palette knife into the grooves to prise it open. She was fed on a diet of fruits, fish, and boiled vegetables. As a treat, sometimes nuts and breads would be incorporated. Once, as a very rare prize, she was given a sweet treat. A pastry. She had almost forgotten the buttery, flaky nature of that morsel. She asked for another. “We don’t want you gaining weight, now do we?” came the doorman’s answer. The storage room became her home after hours. She was free to roam it. There was a small bathroom, a sofa, a few dry goods in a cupboard, and a couple of rickety light fixtures. The doorman brought her a new canvas and paper every fortnight alongside some pigments. He sold her paintings to the patrons of her show. If a particularly good price was reached, she would receive extra comforts such as a silk robe, fluffy slippers, and a Persian rug for the room. Art became her salvation. She would request more books over time. The doorman wasn’t keen on her reading and heavily regulated what she was allowed to read: a children’s book about a dollhouse, this picture book about wetland birds, and a ghost story collection. Nothing that would inspire freedom, rebellion, or knowledge of oppression and subjugation. She must remain ignorant. For in ignorance, she was docile, malleable – unmotivated. The nephew, however, found mirth in bringing her tomes on wars, revolutions, freedom marches, a book on the woman who opened the first university, another on women protesting for equality… Her mind reeled at the possibilities. At first, she dismissed all of this as mere fantasy. After all, she was the star of the show. These men paid to see her dance and paint. Surely, their obsession victimised them. She didn’t care for any of them, for they all looked the same to her. Their bulging eyes, mouths watering, the uncomfortable distension of their trousers, a certain insanity behind their gaze. They spent their hard-earned money to simply gaze but never touch. She wondered if the doorman would be as interesting to watch if he were caged in her stead. If he would look as elegant as she, flapping his wings about in rhythmic movement. She couldn’t fathom sacrificing her silks (for this is what she saw as monetary value) to gawp at a man in a cage, singing lullabies and spinning around until his arms hit the edges of his confines, all the while ignoring the window in the corner of his room. Dihya Ammar Dihya is a writer, poet, artist, and scientist based in northern Scotland. They live with their orange cat, pet frogs, and an ever-expanding book collection ** Stranded in Pigment She doesn’t remember entering this doorless cage. Doesn’t remember being posed to provoke. A nude dolly- bird behind bars. She doesn’t remember falling into a sleeping-beauty dream, waking up, all softness around her gone metallic. Steel disks and tools hanging in geometric order. Swans swim away, carrying her gaze—leave her longing once more to linger at a pond’s edge, to look up at the early-morning sky and see any slice of moon. Sandi Stromberg Sandi Stromberg is the author of the poetry collection Frogs Don’t Sing Red. Her work recently appeared in The Orchards Poetry Journal, Pulse, equinox, Gyroscope Review, Panoply, San Pedro River Review, The Windhover, and The Senior Class. An editor at The Ekphrastic Review, she also edited two anthologies of poetry--Untameable City and Echoes of the Cordillera--and is a four-time Pushcart and two-time Best of the Net nominee. Dutch translations of her poems have appeared in Brabant Cultureel. ** The Vanity of Birds and Man A morning stroll interrupted - a flash of red on white close by - a scarlet cardinal flitting around a car catches my eye. He settles, perching awkwardly, and stares into the side mirror. What can be so captivating? A rival bird? An admirer? His handsome reflection stares back. He surely knows he is alone? So mesmerised by the image, he must perceive it as his own. He admires his bright red plumage with whistles of self-awareness. Is this a reasoning creature, capable of self-consciousness? In our conceit and vanity we call something stupid ‘birdbrain’. This narcissist makes me wonder: of Bird and Man who is more vain? Michael Eyre Michael Eyre lives near Preston, England with his wife and Siberian cat. After a successful career working as a veterinarian, Mike discovered a passion for poetry and has been published in a literary magazine and shortlisted in an international poetry competition. He creates poems that are sometimes thought-provoking, sometimes amusing, but above all entertaining. ** Resting Concubine Conjuring a concubine is a birthright and I will summon you now. I pluck you freshly from the fields, you are choice amongst the fading fleurs, the disdain for wildest ones along the roadsides continuing. Find pleasure in your brilliance leading to capture. I see you tittering between fingers and pointing at my foibles as I fumble through the connections and try to weave together the story of how you came to be. The display case is fully forming, all pieces hammered together, I tire as it hastily comes together. It’s time to rest. Breathe softly now. Softly. This is not a burden. The music plays quietly in the background, but in the foreground, your objections are a cacophony to my deaf ears, and the slight changes in your position seeps out a clear beacon of messages. You are now fit for show and your curves will push out the envy behind each staring eye, bared teeth, and seething sentiments mixed heartily with bombast and brave shouts of the small few who have mixed their own set of slurries, now overly imbibing. The resulting picture show of peace on the pond leans on our attraction to fantasy and we settle on a semblance of safety on the surface and just beneath, where the eddies meet the rock, the water bubbles up and we imagine that all is clear. Christine Gay Dutton Christine Gay Dutton is originally from Rochester, NY and spent her early childhood in the deep south in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. She resides with her wife in Northampton, Massachusetts. She began writing poetry in 1999 and her work has been published with Kota Press, Aileron, Deep Cleveland, Poems for Peace, Survival & Beyond, Meat for Tea, and Identity Theory. She has participated in and led a variety of workshops in the spirit of the methods of Amherst Writers & Artists. She currently is a member of Writing Sisters, a BIPOC and Queer community of writers in Holyoke, Massachusetts. When not writing, you might find Christine running along the Connecticut River. ** My Melancholy Machine My melancholy machine She gave up, gave in A poppy, poisonous, profound Purified and pumped out She gave up, gave in Beauty captured Purified, pumped out Opiodic joy Beauty captured Pierced the skin Opiodic euphoria But nothing within Aly Hux ** Unpaired Eyes See the World as Flat They constructed a machinery of possession using cages and mechanical memories they locked symphonies in boxes as women danced the Charleston using cages and mechanical memories they captured birds and musical notes as women backward danced the tango unable to see the future they captured birds and musical notes and connected songs and syphilis unable to see the future which was the same as the past they connected songs and illness separated art into squares which was the same as the past when lust went to war with nature they separated art into squares as a woman fox trots undressed when lust went to war with nature static with longings kept in machines Michele Worthington lives in Tucson, AZ where the Sonoran Desert, urban sprawl and our unacknowledged apocalypse prod her writing. She has had photography and poetry in Harpy Hybrid Review, Sandcutter, Persephone Literary, SandyRiverReview, OneArtPoetry, and UnlostJournal. She was a Tucson Haiku Hike and Arizona Matsuri contest winner, and a finalist for the 2023 Tucson Festival of Books literary awards. ** Bird / Cage Now you be me in my cage Trapped in the middle of a golden age Roadway, stairway, cold hard hell The loud humming, the subtle swell Trapped in the middle of a golden age Golden curtains, iron cage The loud humming, the subtle swell The prisoner rotting up on stage Golden curtains, iron cage Morphine, codeine, opium gum The prisoner rotting up on stage Silk road, dirt road, and then some Morphine, codeine, opium gum Darkness dipped in a moonlight shell Silk road, dirt road, and then some You've all seen me in my cage Darkness dipped in a moonlight shell Roadway, stairway, cold hard hell You've all seen me in my cage Now you be me in my cage Nuri Gunduz Nuri Gunduz is an unemployed man who lives in New York. He enjoys writing, making music, and petting cats. He is originally from Turkey, and publishes music under the name Hiçbir Şey. Somebody please give him a job. ** The Machine Could Not Hold Her Grief They built the machine to study the soul. Or so they said. They labeled her: Loss Specimen #003, Female-presenting Griever, Anomaly: still mourning after 1,000 days. They were certain of what they saw. She remembers none of this. Only the first rupture. The way her body folded in on itself after her mother vanished in winter. How the ache grew so large it leaked out through her fingertips and cracked mirrors. That was the day the men came with graphs and soft voices. They told her they could measure it. Fix it. Cure the recurrence. They called her grief “a malfunction in the system.”Now they keep her inside a cage of copper and language. They adjust knobs. Feed her milk. Show her swans and say, “Look. Life continues.” But she knows the water is painted. She knows the milk isn’t hers. It was meant for calves. They think they’re studying her. But they don’t even know her name.They study the shell. They code the curves. They miss the current moving through. Her grief is not a virus. It’s a portal At night, when the wires go slack and the fans still, she slips through her own ribcage into the deeper world. The one her mother taught her in dreams. The one where tears are sacred, and silence is not healing but forgetting. She returns with mushrooms in her mouth and seeds in her belly. Each day, she leaves small revolutions in the corners of the lab: a poppy blooming where only wires were, a gear rusted shut with saltwater, a whisper in the air that wasn’t programmed. She does not want revenge. Only remembrance. Only the end of cages. When the system finally fails, and it will, her grief will be the glitch that freed the whole machine. Michelle Carrera Michelle Carrera is a Puerto Rican grief worker, death doula, and writer exploring the intersections of mourning, memory, and liberation. Through her project Grief and Liberation, she shares grief-centered writing, grief workshops, and speculative fiction rooted in decay, transformation, and reverence. Her work often blends the surreal with the ancestral, imagining new ways to grieve and remember. ** Calling All MacGyvers! Well, I've done it I've Rube Goldberged myself Inside this situation -- again A maze of puzzling proportions This time without any explanations Of where the keys might be for this contraption Of course! I thought about trying to ask the swans But a caged human asking birds for freedom seemed like a bad idea Of course! They'd probably just hiss and gawk I bet they are mocking my blushed beak and cheeks as they speak Of course! The keys are in my pants that are nowhere to be found -- Don't ask Of course! This is in-bare-assing Please try to focus Look at me -- No kissed frog prince will charm me out of this mess I need the kind of problem resolver that didn't doze off in chemistry class I need someone that owns a Swiss Army knife and miles of duct tape Someone who can accommodate with an intuitive pull-it-togetherness Who will still love me even though I’d spend most of my time Wrapped in their bubble gum bindings and paper clipped by their intellect That's what I need To get out of here And the next time too Calling all MacGyvers! Brendan Dawson Brendan Dawson is an American born writer based in Italy. He writes from his observations and experiences while living, working, and traveling abroad. Currently, he is compiling a collection of poetry and short stories from his time in the military and experiences as an expat. ** The Cellar In the final week of Olga’s responsibility for the cellar, a pair of swans and a pair of ducks squabbled. They fought over the right to nest on a ledge beneath a bridge that spanned the town’s river. Olga borrowed a boat and rowed to the bridge. The swans and ducks fell silent, and with a flutter of wings, joined her in the boat. After she had moored at a jetty, the four birds waddled behind Olga to a derelict house on the town’s outskirts. Here, Olga produced a key and opened a door set in a grime-covered wall. She ushered the birds across the threshold and said, “This cellar is where you settle your differences. I’ll lock the door. You have fifteen minutes. Don’t waste them.” She glanced at her watch and sat on a nearby block of stone. Quarter of an hour later, she unlocked the door and let the birds out. “I assume you’ve resolved your differences,” she said. The pair of swans and pair of ducks looked content. They took to the air together and flew back to the bridge. The rest of that day proved quiet for Olga. But the next morning, as she sat with a book by the cellar’s door, a crowd of townsfolk approached her. “We’ve a problem,” said one. “It’s serious,” said another. “That person who calls herself an inventor has kept us up all night with the noise of her latest ridiculous machine,” complained a third. Olga rose. “You know what you must do. The cellar provides a space for the resolution of disputes and misunderstandings. Bring the inventor here. One of you—just one, mind—must enter the cellar with her and reach an agreement about her activities.” The crowd discussed the matter among themselves. They appointed an undertaker to represent the town. “Fetch the inventor,” Olga said to her. “The rest of you can go about your normal business.” Olga locked the undertaker and the inventor in the cellar for half an hour. When they emerged, they left with their arms over each other’s shoulders. “The matter is settled, it seems,” Olga said to herself. For the two days that followed, Olga had nothing to do other than read. As she returned home on the second day, she passed a shop that sold birdcages. From within, she heard a sob. She paused and knocked on the window. A naked woman appeared on the other side of the glass and said, “I’m closed.” “I know,” Olga replied. “Clearly, though, you are upset. I hold the key to the cellar. If you have a problem with someone, the two of you should visit me tomorrow. But don’t arrive late. It is my last day.” The woman shook her head. “The problem is with no one but myself.” Olga shrugged and walked on. The next evening, with just a few minutes left before Olga’s retirement, the naked birdcage woman strolled up to her. “Let me into the cellar,” the birdcage woman said. The demand perplexed Olga. What does this woman intend to achieve, she wondered, when the dispute involves herself alone? “Let me in,” the birdcage woman insisted. Exasperated by such rudeness, Olga unlocked the door. “You have ten minutes.” The woman passed into the cellar. Olga sat, but a few moments later, she heard a shout from the other side of the door. She turned the key, and the birdcage woman shoved the door open. “This is not how to behave,” Olga said. “Use of the cellar is a privilege. Never in my time here has someone acted so discourteously.” The birdcage woman grasped Olga’s shoulders. “I can’t be in there by myself. My thoughts tormented me more than ever.” Olga shook herself free from the woman’s hold. “You were in there for only a matter of seconds.” “Come in with me.” “Why? I have no issue with you.” “Come in with me.” I have never been in the cellar, Olga thought. I have not had a need to go in. The birdcage woman took her hand and pulled her towards the doorway. Suddenly tired, Olga allowed the woman to lead her down the stone steps into the damp, underground room. The only light came from the top of the steps. “I should have closed the door,” Olga murmured. “Listen,” the birdcage woman said and tightened her grip on Olga’s hand. “For years, I’ve felt trapped in my job. I couldn’t work out how I could break free and find other employment. Who wants a person who sells birdcages?” “I fail to see what this is to do with me,” Olga replied. “Pay attention. You’re on the point of retirement. You, who has the best job in this town. A job I want.” These words gave Olga renewed energy. “Your arrogance astounds me,” she said, and pulled her hand away. “This job of mine is a thankless task conducted for the benefit of misfits. Furthermore, I had doubted whether someone should replace me, and you have made up my mind.” Olga ran up the steps, slammed the door closed and locked it. From within the cellar, she heard the birdcage woman scream. “Create as much noise as you like,” Olga whispered. She walked to the bridge that spanned that town’s river and threw the key into the water. The swans and ducks swam out from beneath the bridge and looked up at her. “I did not mean to include you among the ranks of the misfits,” she said to them and went home. After dinner, she put her passport in a pocket and left town. K. J. Watson K. J. Watson’s stories and poems have appeared on the radio; in comics, magazines, and anthologies; and online. ** American Beauty If Max had anything to do with it, he would not let his daughter Lillian out of her Brooklyn cage. Her auburn hair and her shapely figure worried him each night she had a date. He wanted her to change the world. She wanted to change her hairstyle and nail polish color. She was his graceful swan, testy when tested. Yet, she was also the American Beauty of his flower garden. If only he could use his industrial tools–his wrench, his pipes, his coils–to keep her in his house forever. Play Tschaikovsky’s Swan Lake on the phonograph. How hard it is, releasing our children into the world. Thorns grow ev’rywhere. Barbara Krasner Barbara Krasner earned a World Art History certificate from Smithsonian Associates as she grappled with the confluence of chronic illnesses. Writing in response to art, especially surrealist art, helps her heal. Her work has been featured in The Ekphrastic Review, MacQueen's Quinterly, and elsewhere. Her first ekphrastic poetry collection is forthcoming from Kelsay Books. Visit Barbara's website at www.barbarakrasner.com. ** Spring Bough (the usually female name given Koga as Buddhist priest) As style, so life, the surreal, some schizoid scene, as Cyclopes blind - the pupil, baseball, never kind - yet giant as an artist type; ungilded, awkward, not a norm, expelled, unfinanced, brushed away. As we hear, read, a caged bird sings, some swansong summing turmoil; up- away from sway of father’s path, serene or regal never found. A cultural, religious clash, tradition rejects in his class, as school of western art secured, but opera, too light, those friends. A would-be artist-poet-priest, in Action see hope soon depart, through stillbirth markers stricken, sick, he’s dogged by tremors, hand on heart. But canvas, cast for troubled mind. 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 ** Canary (Girl) Do bright bars breed birds, fetters father fine feathers, stripped skin summon song? Find your opposable thumbs: Crack their coop. Dare to dress. Speak. Heather Neill Heather Neill is a mother of four daughters and a part-time lecturer in composition at Rice University. She is a member of Mark Jodon's Poetry Circle at The Center for Christian Spirituality. **  Join us for the epic event of the year. You won't be sorry. It is wild, exhilarating, exhausting and wonderful. A day of pure creation. Play. Brainstorming. Join us on Sunday, or do it on your own time over the following weeks. This year, to celebrate ten years of The Ekphrastic Review, an optional Champagne Party follows the marathon on zoom. Details are below. Perfect Ten: an Ekphrastic Marathon Try something intense and unusual- an ekphrastic marathon, celebrating nine years of The Ekphrastic Review. Join us on Sunday, July 13 2025 for our annual ekphrastic marathon. This year we are celebrating ten years!!!!! This is an all -day creative writing event that we do independently, together. Take the plunge and see what happens! Write to fourteen different prompts, poetry or flash fiction, in thirty minute drafts. There will be a wide variety of visual art prompts posted at the start of the marathon. You will choose a new one every 30 minutes and try writing a draft, just to see what you can create when pushed outside of your comfort zone. We will gather in a specially created Facebook page for prompts, to chat with each other, and support each other. Time zone or date conflicts? No problem. Page will stay open afterwards. Participate when you can, before the deadline for submission. The honour system is in effect- thirty minute drafts per prompt, fourteen prompts. Participants can do the eight hour marathon in one or two sessions at another time and date within the deadline for submissions (July 31, 2025). Polish and edit your best pieces later, then submit five for possible publication on the Ekphrastic site. One poem and one flash fiction will win $100 CAD each. Last year this event was a smashing success with hundreds of poems and stories written. Let's smash last year out of the park and do it even better this year! Marathon: Sunday July 13, from 10 am to 6 pm EST (including breaks) (For those who can’t make it during those times, any hours that work for you are fine. For those who can’t join us on July 13, catch up at a better time for you in one or two sessions only, as outlined above.) Champagne Party: at 6.05 pm until 7. 30 on Sunday, July 13, join participants on Zoom to celebrate an exhilarating day. Bring Champagne, wine, or a pot of tea. We'll have words from The Ekphrastic Review, conversation as a chance to connect with community, and some optional readings from your work in the marathon. Story and poetry deadline: July 31, 2025 Up to five works of poetry or flash fiction or a mix, works started during marathon and polished later. 500 words max, per piece. Please include a brief bio, 75 words or less Participation is $20 CAD (approx. 15 USD). Thank you very much for your support of the operations, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review, and the prizes to winning authors. If you are in hardship and cannot afford the entry, but you want to participate, please drop us a line at [email protected] and we'll sign you up. Selections for showcase and winning entries announced sometime in September. Sign up below! Perfect Ten: annual ekphrastic marathon
CA$20.00
Celebrate ten years of The Ekphrastic Review with our annual ekphrastic marathon. Fourteen drafts, thirty minutes each, poetry, flash fiction, or CNF. You'll choose from a curated selection of artworks chosen to challenge, inspire, and stimulate. The goal of the marathon is to finish the marathon by creating fourteen drafts. Optional: you'll have time after the event to polish any drafts and submit them. Selected works will be published in TER and a winner in poetry and flash fiction will each be chosen and honoured with $100 award. Following the marathon, exhausted writers can join our Champagne Party on zoom to celebrate an amazing day.  Die Erde & Der Himmel (Heaven and Earth), by Séverine Gallardo (France) 2024. Click image for artist Instagram page. 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 Heaven and Earth, by Séverine Gallardo. Deadline is May 9, 2025. 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 GALLARDO 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, May 9, 2025. 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.  Reimagining Hwy 1 Optimized for Public Transit, by Taylor Seamount (USA) contemporary. Click image for artist site. Another Day The highway jamming. Horns honking, people cursing, just another day. Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher has been writing since 2010 and has had many micro-flash fiction stories published. In 2018 her book Shorts for the Short Story Enthusiasts, was published, The Importance of Being Short, in 2019 and In A Flash in 2022. She currently resides on Long Island, New York with her husband Richard and dogs Lucy and Breanna. ** night blind we could wake up one day and see fewer cars that we don’t need to breathe all day ok Mike Sluchinski ** we hold these i remember it was maybe ford dodge or chrysler well they said that an open road was air to breathe Mike Sluchinski Mike Sluchinski loves Canadian fiction, especially pieces by politicians. El Shaddai made the crooked places straight and got him published in Pulpmag, The Literary Review of Canada,The Coachella Review, Inlandia, Welter, Poemeleon, Lit Shark, Proud To Be Vol. 13, The Ekphrastic Review, MMPP (Meow Meow Pow Pow), Kelp Journal, ‘the fib review’, Eternal Haunted Summer, Syncopation Lit. Journal, South Florida Poetry Journal (SOFLOPOJO), Freefall, and more coming! ** Highways Department If all those in charge of highways Were real drivers, and more aware Not mere eco-sensitive city cyclists Then we’d see a different solution Dispelling their firmly held illusion Seeing images of those raised fists Not in triumph, but more despair But that is how local politics plays Yet no matter what experience says Poor commissioning of road repair Selecting only the suppliers on lists As they say, it avoids any confusion Benefits are modest, often Lilliputian With no incentive to slap any wrists Just a shrug to say, C’est la guerre Claiming it was only an initial phase Machinery left in the coned off bays No workers present, no activity there Few stuck in traffic would be optimists That it will ever reach any conclusion And that it is progress, mere delusion Aware that there will be no apologists It’ll be yet further long delays to bear Three blocked lanes feels like a maze Clouds of exhaust fumes is now a haze Using up fuel that few can really spare No saving the planet as the world insists Keep heat on and damn the pollution There’s no argument about attribution And traffic jams are no place for trysts Working from home may be more fair But some roadworks will attract praise Howard Osborne Howard has written poetry and short stories, also a novel and several scripts. With poems published online and in print, he is a published author of a non-fiction reference book and several scientific papers many years ago. He is a UK citizen, retired, with interests in writing, music and travel. ** After Frost Main stage way – bottleneck. I took the least travelled turn – lush, tangs, skies – soul mates. Ekaterina Dukas Ekaterina Dukas, MA in Philology and Philosophy, has studied and taught at Universities of Sofia, Delhi and London and authored a book on mediaeval manuscript art for The British Library. She writes poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning and her collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europa Edizioni, 2021. ** Faster I cannot come to you any faster. Although my heart beats in preparation for the journey. I see what you created. Strange beings of acceleration without names. Without hearts or souls. This is not the way to heaven as I had thought. The graveyard awaits. Dreams of power and forced ownership. Dressed as an innocent being with an untold history. Parading as a family member. It will guide you to unknown and unkind destinations. Its facade will change to confuse you. It contains the engine of mystery within. It will flash and wink its lights and confuse your senses. it is not a friend and has no name. It shows its true face once adopted. Its uniform smile mimicking a loved one. A whirl wind that will confuse you with its speed. Do not be conned or misguided by its power. It is deadly. Sandy Rochelle Sandy Rochelle is a widely published poet, actress and filmmaker. A member of the Acting Company of Lincoln Center. And voting member of the Recording Academy. She wrote, produced, narrated, and directed her award winning documentary film Silent Journey. Streaming on Culture Unplugged. Publications include, Dissident Voice, Wild Word, Connecticut River Review, One Art, and others. ** Misfortune As I arrived at work, I realized I had forgotten my backpack. The backpack that carries my computer. My computer holds a variety of things; the missing assignments that are well overdue, my science project that I have been working on for well over a year, and the important documents I need for other business. And most importantly, I had forgotten a comfortable shirt. The work shirt feels like it choking me, and I cannot work with it on. Quickly, I sent my mom a message at seven thirteen a.m. “imma be going back home one i get out, cuz i forgot my backpack.” “You want me to take it to you?” she responded at seven thirty-four a.m. “i don’t have my stuff in there. i’ll stop by quickly. i also forgot my shirt.” I said as I told her about my misfortune. “I saw it open, I figured you were missing stuff, so, I just left it.” She replied, closing the discussion. After working for six hours straight, I sat patiently waiting for my car to warm up as the car never fails to show its age. It cannot run smoothly in the cold, or in the heat. At times, it’ll stutter before it starts, luckily, today it didn’t do that. It’s going to be a great day, I remember thinking to myself. I head home, to collect my missing belongings. Once arrived, I argue with my dog, as he does not let me get inside. And I am embarrassed he watched me fumbling with my keys for a short minute. I calm down and I gather the missing pieces; my shirt, my computer, and some deodorant, I had forgotten to put some on that morning. After freshening up, I set my sight on the road and headed towards my next destination. The list of things that need to be accomplished, roam freely in my mind. All aimlessly, without an end goal. Before I got lost in thought once more, I approached an intersection, where the light was freshly yellow. With just enough time, I was able to come to an ungraceful stop. I check my surroundings for safety, and see a blue Dodge Ram rapidly approaching, going thirty to forty miles. It gets closer and closer, no sign of slowing down or stopping. As I get ready to grind my teeth, It happens. It happened. I am forcefully jerked backwards, all the way to the back seat, where my backpack sat right behind me. Panic sits in as I realize my seat is no longer resting in my preferred spot. My car was brutally flung ten feet into the middle of the intersection. What do I do? This has never happened to me before. I had seen it happen to others, and knew it could happen, but I never thought it would. I scrambled to find my phone, and opened it up to dial 911. The keypad is open, waiting for its buttons to be pressed, but my fingers will not follow the pattern I was forced to remember. I thought it was a joke. This didn’t really happen. I wonder if this really was an emergency. “Siri, call 911.” I blurt out. She responds in her robotic voice, “Calling emergency services.” The lady on the other end answers my panicked call, and asks the basic questions. “Where is your emergency located?” “What is your name?” “What is your emergency?" After answering her questions, it was time to get mine out. “Do I pull over to the side of the road? I do not want to cause another accident.” “Yes.” She said. After promptly clearing the intersection, I called my mom to tell her what happened. She answered her phone within three rings and said, “Hello?” “Mom, where are you?” I said, “At Walmart, why?” “I was just in a car accident,” I revealed as the gate for my tears, had finally broken loose. The pain in my back was making itself known. No matter how I moved, the dull pain stabbed me in my midback. I can see the man in the blue Dodge Ram hop out of his truck, and inspect his truck, and then the back end of my Jeep. This time, he cautiously approaches my driver window, and asks if I have insurance. The answer will always be yes. Before I knew it, EMT arrived at the scene and asked if I was in any pain. My response, “No, I don’t think so.” What I really wanted to say was, “I was just rear-ended, what do you think?’’ But I stayed as collected as I could. EMTs had checked my vitals, and my blood pressure was at an all time high. While all the events had finally unfolded in my head, I was rushed to the emergency room. Idania Konna ** Hope and Oxygen In the video on her website, from the top of an overpass, We can see the artist Taylor Seamount looking through a small rectangle. She is painting a herd of cars driving towards her. She is immortalizing her counter-current vision of the future. In this video, she says that “The future is not set in stone”. More trees, more colors, more space. She brings hope and oxygen. I live in Montreal where we have to slalom every day between an army of orange traffic cones. I imagine Taylor Seamount coming to Montreal and painting those cones. She would reimagine them as pretty trees. If this dream is realized, with her exceptional brushwork, Every traffic cone in the city will be metamorphosed into a tree in the warm orange colors of autumn. A delight for our eyes and a big breath of fresh air. Nevertheless, after my encounter with Taylor Seamount‘s Painting Art, thanks to Ekphrastic, I will never see those horrible cones as they are. In my mind they will be an enchanted forest. Jean Bourque Jean is retired from Special Education. Even if is not a writer, this is his tenth participation in The Ekphrastic Challenge. He is learning English as a second language. The Ekphrastic Challenge offers him this opportunity. Language can be a handicap, but it shouldn't prevent anyone from communicating. ** Headlights and Taillights Headlights and taillights But how much we blazed away the hours And travelled through the night To reach the sunlight To see how much has changed Without noticing how much is still just the same When it's dusk or sunrise We all have sentimental leanings For the roads we've left behind The bedsheets that we haven't creased The pillows we haven't cried on Since we drove far away To reach or make some better dreams. It's like the world is on the road with us It's a deluge to depart and find an empty lane Midnight truckers have all the road They departed earliest to find a lay-by A tarmac with a gentle hum a primordial Om Listening to some dolly bird, a hitchhiker Calling herself Beatrix or Beatrice The traveller or the voyager Promising she's lost all her inner demons, isolated rage And finally, it seems she's found some shining hope In a glove compartment that won't close As she peels off a shot, and then all her clothes Dries her tears and blows her nose Watching a million cars go by, honking into the night. No new destinations reached tonight. Mark Andrew Heathcote Mark Andrew Heathcote is an adult learning difficulties support worker. His poems have been published in journals, magazines, and anthologies online and in print. He is from Manchester and resides in the UK. Mark is the author of In Perpetuity and Back on Earth, two books of poems published by Creative Talents Unleashed. ** Stuck You try faster but it only makes your heart beat through your chest You try narrower but you can’t squeeze by or through You try to escape but you only become more entrapped You try not to think but nothing can stop your mind from disappearing inside of falling apart Kerfe Roig A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/ (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/. ** Tracked Changes (a villanelle for Reimagining Hwy 1) The road we are on cannot be sustained And who knows how long it will last When will we reimagine a change? Even though we have tried to maintain The congestion of cars will cause a collapse The road we are on cannot be sustained The original plans never could have contained Because this road was formed from conditions of the past When will we reimagine a change? Traffic and fuel prices add to our pains As exhaust and smog raise greenhouse gas The road we are on cannot be sustained Our way of thinking must be retrained A better solution is well within our grasp When will we reimagine a change? Who will stand and break from the chains? And help us get on a better track The road we are on cannot be sustained When will we reimagine a change? Brendan Dawson Brendan Dawson is an American born writer based in Italy. He writes from his observations and experiences while living, working, and traveling abroad. Currently, he is compiling a collection of poetry and short stories from his time in the military and experiences as an expat. ** Farm Hands "And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home... Time let me play and be Golden in the mercy of his means --" Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill "Sometimes things fall apart and come together better." Marilyn Monroe Austin, I-10 West, 1950 1. Why did they pave the roadway that curved upward toward mountains that looked like winter? Ice was an illusion, wasn't it? The dry earth could have been anywhere as long as it was summer and the horses came to the kitchen window when my grandmother cut up carrots. I never asked why I was innocent; glad I was, translating erotica to exotica; why the moths spun silk, infatuated with light like the irrepressible need of a child's hands to gather the messages of fossils. 2. When the creek bed was dry with drought and the willows on the farm wept on back acreage; when the horse at the window had huge brown eyes -- a distinctive face with a knife-blade shape -- my grand- mother named him Dagger. I'd ride, in those days, happy on a horse on that farm by a farm road destined to become a highway; happy as the day was long in a poem* -- so heaven can't reveal what heritage conceals. 3. It was a question of life without a father. My answer was to be a wild child daring danger, determined to ride bareback. My grandfather nicknamed me Tonto his Scout, meant to be his Kemo Sabe, a collector of creek stones that weighed down my pockets when everything I wanted to believe in was hopeful anyway -- like dreams conceived in visionary moments; glimpses of a clear, quartz center, a full moon's magic mirror inside an earth-stone's plain exterior like love's hand-print -- the way you kissed 4. my palm your lips caressing lines that bring to mind the wrinkled indentations on the ram's horn of a favorite sheep, saved when he died and so became a mythic memory of music like the shape of an instrument I'd seen in a picture in a Greek god's hand -- perhaps Apollo's -- his horn played in the centuries before rock bands... before sound stopped for my filly -- I'd named her Easter for the day in springtime -- Easter when she was born. 5. Where was she going? All I could know (what I was told) she'd jumped the cattle guard to reach the road I-10 West, Optimized -- Easter killed by an ambulance speeding toward Austin's City Limits to save someone that sunny day an accident that made death both tragic and ironic... & all the while, I was young and unaware my farm hands busy on the farm, lost that day in a field of wildflowers enchanted by seductive blooms 6. bursting into life that sad summer, one I choose to remember by dents-de-lions, the Lion's Teeth -- as if Austin were a French-speaking town in a Texas jungle with a field of dandelions a weed becoming make a wish and blow, when flower- heads grow old their "hair" like threads -- sepal filaments on a white corolla -- scattered when the winds of wildflower wantonness mingle with the roots of Black-Eyed Susans -- that abandon! 7. living side-by-side with the delicate grace of Queen Anne's Lace -- like trim on a christening dress for floral infancy worn by nature waiting for an Indian Summer a field on canvas created with Indian Paint Brushes that reveal the inevitability of death, the fragility of life, my Easter and the pale pink buttercups dropping paper-thin petals when the sturdy Bluebonnets like Texas pioneers stand tall beside the traffic -- a painting of new age roadways -- the burgeoning strife of highway life. Laurie Newendorp Author's notes: *"Fern Hill," by Dylan Thomas; animal horns and conch shells were used as musical instruments.) Laurie Newendorp lives and writes in Houston. A graduate of The Creative Writing Department,The University of Houston, she has been honored many times by The Ekphrastic Review's Challenge. Influenced by her maternal grandmother, who received a Pioneer Teaching Degree -- recognition that she taught before teaching standards were established in early 20th century Texas, she went on in the 1950's, to get a Master's Degree in Education from The University of Texas. Newendorp was raised in Austin. The setting of her poem (her paternal grandparent's farm on what became I-10 West) is one in which she sees a farm's field of wildflowers as a floral connection between worlds, historic and contemporary. Her book, When Dreams Were Poems, explores the relationships between life, art and poetry -- the nature of ekphrasis. ** Arcology Marcus Greenbaum leaned back into his Prius driver’s seat. He should have known better than to leave his architectural firm at rush hour. But he had promised his son to come to his Warriors basketball game, 4 and 0, at the high school. As power forward, his son contributed to that for sure. Marcus sighed. If only there were another route besides Highway 1 to get him there. Normally, this would be the fastest way versus the backroads with a stoplight on every corner. If he hadn’t given up smoking last month, he would have lit up. Such a waste of time to sit here, bumper to bumper, headlight to headlight. Everyone inching up when the opportunity allowed, as if that maneuver would get them anywhere faster. He rolled down his window but all he could smell was car exhaust. Fossil fuel emission. He rolled the window back up and turned up the volume on his satellite radio. Maybe contemporary jazz on Watercolors could ease his tension, make him forget about how late he was going to be. If only there were a better, more efficient way. If only, like during the early pre-COVID days when working at home or remotely was called telecommuting. “Save on gas, time, and pollution,” companies told their employees. If only mass transit offered solutions to go from Point A to Point B. But this city had meager funds to put any public transportation alternatives in place. Any recommendations Marcus’s firm made to the city’s Planning Council were rejected. “Great idea,” they said. “But where’s the money going to come from?” Architects and urban planners had no response to that. What buses there were, huffing and puffing along Main Street, exhaled nightmares of black fog. And who wanted to be behind a bus that stopped at every corner, passengers boarding and unboarding? COVID changed everything. Individual, energy-vampire vehicles clogged the roads. No one wanted to wear masks anymore. No one wanted to carpool. Sure, more people worked from home nowadays, but they still needed to get on Highway 1 to run errands, pick up kids, and go to the mall. If only. Marcus stared at the landscape. He could envision eco-friendly buses stopping at a transfer station where commuters could pile into a high-speed, energy efficient monorail to and from the city, a way to reduce the strain of traffic bottlenecks in the city itself. Such a solution would certainly cut down on commutation time and possibly expense, not to mention frustration and stress. Luscious trees could bound the transfer station and the highway. A real green belt. Let everyone breathe. Let the highway breathe without this pulmonary blood clot of vehicles. If only. Traffic began to move. Marcus sat upright. After the game, after the kids went to bed, he planned to plant himself in front of his drafting table in his home office, and draw what he’d seen in his mind’s eye. An arcology master plan. If his son was a warrior power forward, he could be, too. Regeneration was possible. Reuse would be possible. He would make them possible. Barbara Krasner Barbara Krasner earned a World Art History certificate from Smithsonian Associates as she grappled with the confluence of chronic illnesses. Writing in response to art, including Taylor Seamount's diptych, helps her heal. Her work has been featured in The Ekphrastic Review, MacQueen's Quinterly, and elsewhere. Her first ekphrastic poetry collection is forthcoming from Kelsay Books. Visit Barbara's website at www.barbarakrasner.com. ** To Taylor Seamount Regarding Reimagining Hwy 1 Optimized for Public Transit Beware the ways we need to find requiring we rewire the mind. — PB You juxtapose these views you chose -- reality and re-suppose -- to drive the eye to dream again regarding what so long has been the asphalt river engineered as altar to the faith revered in place to work unfit to stay and graceful living far away -- the style of life, despite its toll transparent to the transient soul, that harkens spirit bravely free to call of all it dares to be. In better dream, should art persist, our work and life would co-exist, apart but barely by the space that each must spare the other's place to serve the spirit made to soar by will the self will dare explore in venture shared becoming mind of future built to leave behind. 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. ** Imagine What if our log-jammed roadways had evolved from gentler influences and shared solutions were the main modes of transport and everything. Would a gentler influence engender more caring and kindness? Would sharing, generate appreciation and more sharing? What if it were human nature to remember that “but for the grace of god, go I”. Wouldn’t it follow that it would be a calmer and less grasping, more livable world? What if everyone had the basics; food, water, shelter, clothing, safety and could start living, really living. What if the world's richest contributed just 5% of their wealth to lift billions out of poverty, fund humanitarian efforts, and address other global challenges. What could be elevated with the trapped, untapped potential? What if we could see where the opinions of the other lies. There will still be haves and have-nots, majorities and minorities. If we engaged in honest dialogue and kindness, the world could be a different place. Each of our worlds could be a different place. Imagine that. Kaz Ogino Kaz Ogino is a sansei, Japanese Canadian living in Toronto. Her practice is all about curiosity and wonders of the process, in making art and crafting poems. Kaz’s art and visual poetry can be seen on her Instagram accounts: @artbykaz.ca and @artbykaz.play ** rush hour vs transit dream cars press against cars in the slow-moving grind of routine and resignation time is measured in the inches to the next lane a multihued muraled bus breathes color into the greying asphalt shaded by green trees time is softened by the purposeful sharing of space a yellow line splits these two lanes the funeral march of cars the harsh reality brushstrokes and blooms a reimagined future although both sides move ahead only one leads to the future Nivedita Karthik Nivedita Karthik is a graduate in Immunology from the University of Oxford. She is an accomplished Bharatanatyam dancer and published poet. She also loves writing stories. Her poetry has appeared in Glomag, The Ekphrastic Review, The Society of Classical Poets, The Epoch Times, The Poet anthologies, Visual Verse, The Bamboo Hut, Eskimopie, The Sequoyah Cherokee River Journal, and Trouvaille Review. Her microfiction has been published by The Potato Soup Literary Journal. She also regularly contributes to the open mics organized by Rattle Poetry. She currently resides in Gurgaon, India, and works as a senior associate editor. She has two published books, She: The reality of womanhood and The many moods of water. Her profile was recently published in Lifestyle Magazine. ** Ode to Youth My septarian brain remains stuck in the ashes while our house burns baby burns My ilk and I we lit the match creating this inferno Now we gaze at our graves we shrug we say alas and alack there's nothing we can do come for a ride in my cadillac Then out of the smog float beads of hope strung like future wishes to fill my soul And yet and yet again I shrug and twiddle my fiddle Donna-Lee Smith Donna-Lee Smith lives in Montreal, Canada with a message for fellow urbanites: Please don't drive your car to the corner store--it's bad for your health and the health of the planet. Please don't pig out on meat and cheese--it's bad for your health and the health of the planet. As you may have guessed, DLS is a sanctimonious vegan, who buys local produce, walks miles and miles, and doesn't drive.... ** Thumbing Highway One A crowd at every on-ramp. Summer 1968. I saw a teen girl stop her VW beetle for one guy and cry “Stop! Stop!” as 3 more guys piled in somehow and two rode the back bumper—all surfers, teens—up the Capitola onramp, 7 clowns riding a bug. My ride was a canning factory inspector, chatted a foreman in Watsonville while truckloads of artichokes waited in line to dump at a conveyor belt leading into huge metal machinery like coal factories in West Virginia only green, not black. Dropped me at Moss Landing where a one-armed man in a Porsche demonstrated four-on-the-floor shifting with his left arm while steering with his belly, said he gave one arm to Korea in exchange for a woman and she’s his faithful sidekick, his right-hand man. Left me at Carmel where a converted school bus pulled up with peace signs in the window, sweet smell within, down Big Sur to Palo Colorado where a bighearted woman hosted half a dozen crashers eating fruit and beans salvaged from a Safeway dumpster. Turnaround time, got a ride with a Hells Angel kicked out of art school, tight with the bikers painting their leather, took me to Oakland and then I headed east, far from the kindness of strangers, far from the One. Public transit can be whimsical, can be random, can be dangerous, can be love. Joe Cottonwood Joe Cottonwood’s poetry books include Random Saints, Foggy Dog and Son of a Poet. Long ago he wrote an underground novel called Famous Potatoes and recently the award-winning memoir 99 Jobs: Blood Sweat and Houses. His novels for younger readers take place in the fictional town of San Puerco, which bears a striking resemblance to the town of La Honda where he lives under redwoods with his high school sweetheart. He has worked most of his life in the construction trades repairing and improving houses. ** The Cry of Cockatoos I lean by the overbridge in the city of Newcastle watching the orange wall sink, line the gold dust across breadth of dark emptiness. Hurried tempers, trumpet of traffic along the highway, rush to conquer nothingness. Blinking red- Reduce speed Changed traffic conditions. A police car awaits, then races away. Row of pines on my right drooping with white feathers forebode of stalled flights. Siren of an ambulance carrying silence- the cry of cockatoos in tenderness of the moment reimaging life. Abha Das Sarma An engineer and management consultant by profession, Abha Das Sarma enjoys writing. Besides having a blog of over 200 poems (http://dassarmafamily.blogspot.com), her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Spillwords, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Sparks of Calliope, Trouvaille Review, Silver Birch Press, Blue Heron Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, here and elsewhere. Having spent her growing up years in small towns of northern India, she currently lives in Bengaluru. ** Van Gogh On The Morrissey Boulevard Overpass At Night after Sylvia Plath and inspired by the art of Taylor Seamount Stars over Santa Cruz Stars are racing quick as headlamps along the busy Corridor of traffic whose pavement is darker Than the dark of the Pacific because it is quite still. The sea is well. The stars float silently. They seem heavy, yet they float, and no space is visible. Nor do they send up splashes where they fall Or any beacon of dismay or heartache. They are swallowed at once by the waves. Where I am in Zundert, only the faintest stars Play in the gloaming, and then after much encouragement. And they are pale, toned down by such endeavoring. The lonely and unconventional ones never manifest But remain, swirling far away, in their own hot gas. They are outcasts. I cannot comprehend them. They are adrift. But tonight they have journeyed this freeway with no trouble, They are locomotor and confident as the great celestial bodies. The moon is my Indian yellow friend. I miss rain and low-slung clouds. Perhaps they are Hiding behind the mountains Like children playing in the park. Infinite space seems to be the issue up there. Or else there may be smoke from a fire. I am straining to see through the haze. Perhaps they may roll in like ocean fog. And, my dear Theo, what if they are the same, And it is my mind that has made a waking dream? Such a thrall of stellar majesty would alarm me. The sky that I am used to is grey and unforgiving; I think it would not wish for a night without black And made of ultramarine and cobalt blue. It is too solemn and solitary for that-- When it spirals and sinks closer around, A mantle like flannel on fairied ground. And where I stand now, above Highway 1, I see cloud formations in my mind, Unbothered by the flow of automobiles. There is too much sky here; these cars move me too much. From the bridge, with its view of the peaks, each engine Is accounting for its driver. I close my eyes And feel the plain winds like whispers of God. Lara Dolphin A native of Pennsylvania, Lara Dolphin is an attorney, nurse, wife and mother of four. Her chapbooks include In Search Of The Wondrous Whole (Alien Buddha Press), Chronicle Of Lost Moments (Dancing Girl Press), and At Last a Valley (Blue Jade Press). ** The Topography of Ambition It's the road that cuts through everything sparing what little it can --of grassland and woods, the personal property of farm and heart. Yet, somewhere en route, the regrets keep drifting in. Their exhalations spent like milkweed over stalk or bush. The traffic backed up with memories of what has been but never was. Yet, in one tree the conscience sings. A vocalist strumming his old guitar, A ballad about love and sacrifice, the moan of sea gulls after a storm; and a fisher girl stooping in the tide to scavenge what's ever left. Wendy A. Howe Wendy Howe is an English teacher who lives in California. Her poetry reflects her interest in myth, women in conflict and history. Landscapes that influence her writing include the seacoast and high desert where she has formed a poetic kinship with the Joshua trees, hills and wild life spanning ravens, lizards and coyotes. She has been published in the following journals: The Poetry Salzburg Review, The Interpreter's House, Corvid Queen, Strange Horizons, The Acropolis Journal and many others.  The Birdcage, by Harue Koga (Japan) 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 The Birdcage, by Harue Koga. Deadline is April 25, 2025. 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 KOGA 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, April 25, 2025. 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.  Rocky River, by Cookie Wells (USA) 2024. Click on image for artist site. When I Get Back Personal Log: Day 57* I think right now we are above the Allegheny River. When standing at the shore, the water never looks the pristine blue it does from the station’s windows. The brown of the land jagged, sharp, and smooth at the same time. But I was never any good at geography, so it could be the Ohio or even Mississippi River. I wouldn’t know, too busy to stop and study any particular river. But, boy, do I have the time now. When I get back to earth, I will figure out which it is and visit, put my feet in the water and enjoy the earth rolling under my feet. Dani would like that. Before I left, she wanted to be Indiana Jones, go white-water rafting and zip-lining. It’s only been a measly 57 days since launch, and the atmosphere surrounding earth is embedded with my thoughts of her. In Aliens, Ripley wakes up after 57 years to discover her daughter has lived and died while she floated and slept through the darkest parts of space, so perspective. I wonder if the molecules of water floating down that river will be there to greet me when I eventually splash down from space into the ocean. A homecoming for us both after a long, tired journey. We’ll get there, little molecules, I know it. Samantha Gorman *Inspired in part by the situation of the stranded NASA Expedition 71 astronauts that returned to earth on March 18, 2025. Samantha Gorman, a lifelong lover of books, lives in Western Pennsylvania. After taking several creative writing classes, she found her voice and had begun the adventure of becoming a writer. She writes poetry, short fiction, and is working on her first novel. ** To Cookie Wells Regarding Rocky River Defiant rock steadfast will stand to bend the blue by blunt demand not recognizing sculpting force of rapids running rampant course reshaping such resistance shown to be mere setting blue as stone commands by gleam in moment filled that, sensing gem, your brush has stilled as texture of the movement seen majestically you reconvene in rivulets of vivid inks from which the water swiftly shrinks to leave their thin acrylic stain adrift as motion they sustain. 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. ** Aqua An aerial topography from space, some station, satellite? Here focus not on landed mass but river crashing, rocky route - as rocky roads, sweetmeats I eat - gives mix of boulders, H20. These hints in range, aquamarine, clear water (earth shows no such thing), contrasting tints of dun, blue hues, in show of courses, sources, wells. Will current streams give way to ice as bergs break free from well packed cliffs or steam from pyroclastic flows, spurt slow fast blast from lava scree? Delta, dunes, sure lines emerge as depths described in bubble wrap, with shingle, stones and pebble marks outlining limits, liquid draw. What scene by eyes will soon be seen, translated into painterly? 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 online 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. ** Dammed River What happens when fear and dread dam the deepest river the stream that flows below the id? This bank though strong and forgiving demands fresh water to splash the soul’s sand and wash it clean. If this water lingers too long, can it ever flow again? Will it stay blue and vibrant ‘til a savior comes? Or will it turn black with sludge and harden the bank to stone? Margo Stutts Toombs A self-proclaimed internal humorist, Margo Stutts Toombs creates and dwells in wacky worlds. She loves to perform her work at Fringe festivals, art galleries or anywhere food and beverages are served. Her poetry and flash pieces dance in journals, anthologies, and chapbooks. Margo also loves to produce videos. Sometimes, these videos screen at film festivals. One of her favorite pastimes is co-hosting the monthly poetry/flash readings at the Archway Gallery in Houston, Texas. Check out her shenanigans at https://www.margostuttstoombs.com/ or on social media - https://www.facebook.com/margo.toombs/ ** Down the Riverside Down the riverside, land and nature awaiting, the calming of life. Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher has been writing since 2010 and has had many micro-flash fiction stories published. In 2018, her book Shorts for the Short Story Enthusiasts was published, The Importance of Being Short, in 2019, and In A Flash, in 2022. She currently resides on Long Island, New York with her husband Richard and dogs Lucy and Breanna. ** What My Eyes See What my eyes see Is the pathway of light The nervous system Making new connections Cells and neurones activating A whole universe interactive What my eyes see Is the atom and the neutron The interplay of everything The binary code of life Rewriting itself selflessly. Without end or beginning What my eyes see Is visionary and yet normal To me. A cosmic light show With a neon afterglow That energizes my heart And touches my soul. What my eyes see Is spooky action at a distance? The entanglement of everything Awakening in a primordial dream Life under a microscope Never before seen. What my eyes see Is no distraction to me. It is the fabric of my canvas. The oils and the watercolours Of my choice, merging poured out For all to immerse in and be immersed. Mark Andrew Heathcote Mark Andrew Heathcote is an adult learning difficulties support worker. His poems have been published in journals, magazines, and anthologies online and in print. He is from Manchester and resides in the UK. Mark is the author of In Perpetuity, and Back on Earth, two books of poems published by Creative Talents Unleashed. ** Zoom In The sun is high The wind cool And I am hungry I leap from the conifer Lifted higher And blown south Turning and tilting Eyeing the terrain below I float-search The grinding of years Has sharpened rocks below Ground a golden beach Around a lake Of vibrant blue Shimmering with life I descend Dean Luttrell Dean Luttrell, a Houston poet, pianist and artist has been writing poetry since high school. His work has been published in Archway Readers 20th and 25th Anniversary Anthologies and was awarded Third Prize in the Houston Poetry Fest’s Ekphrastic Poetry Competition in 2016. ** How To See Earl says that every painting has a splash of orange near its centre, a visual anchor to guide the eye, keep it from wandering willy-nilly from one edge of the canvas to the other in aimless arcs, thus missing the point the brush was meant to make. We are in a gallery, it is Sunday; Earl is wearing his leather hat, holds his leather bag over his shoulder-- he says he likes to be ready to go somewhere, hates to feel stuck, the way a painting can seem to flow but go nowhere. Earl says this guilelessly, as if he means it not as a line in seduction but as information: news I can use in this museum today and that museum tomorrow, something to remember, to repeat to myself and in doing so to bring back Earl and this moment, like a time stamp that (long after I’ve discarded his gifts and washed away the sour mash of his kisses) remains fresh and present. I wonder if I can find something equivalent, some mark or scent that will tell me where to plant my eye, where to start unraveling the random threads of Earl’s being, find the point at which I should have known better. Susan Levi Wallach Susan Levi Wallach has been published in such journals as Solstice, Rivanna Review, Bacopa Literary Review, Bayou Magazine, The Moth, Southern California Review, and The Thomas Wolfe Review (as a winner of the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize). Her opera Elijah's Violin was performed in San Francisco in 2018. She has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Website lingolit.wordpress.com/ ** Butterfly Wings This period of transition. A pupa, a chrysalis. A suspended time capsule, outward silence masking an inward tumultuous river of change. Mystery soon to be revealed. Butterfly wings on the verge of unfolding, preparing for flight. Of course, I'm not talking about butterflies. Mark Jodon Mark Jodon is the author of two full-length books of poetry, Miles of Silence (Kelsay Books 2024) and Day of the Speckled Trout (Transcendent Zero Press 2015). He is an Iconoclast Artist (www.iconoclast artists.org) and also serves on the board of directors for Houston Performing Arts. He lives in Houston, Texas. ** Thirteen Ways of Playing Tapas after Wallace Stevens and based on the music of Alice Coltrane Among four jazz musicians, The only moving things Were the strings of her harp. II She was of one aim, Like a fire In which there burns one flame. III The audience delighted in the cosmic chords. It was a central piece of the pageant. IV A husband and a wife Are one. A husband and a wife and a song Are one. V I do not know which meant more The music at Birdland Or the meeting of souls The quartets thrumming Or just after. VI Water flowed along the river With savage rocks. The reflection of the bird Swooped across, to and fro. The spirit Shone in the silhouette An imperceptible mood. VII O widows of Dix Hills, Why do you dream of endless joy? Do you not see how blank grief Splashes around the feet Of the women about you? VIII I know technical talents And rehearsed, academic compositions; But I know, too, That a dynamism is involved In what I hear. IX When the heart cried out of loneliness, It signaled the birth Of one of many changes. X At the sound of syncopation Flying in the summer breeze Even the students of theory Would put down their books. XI She walked through Woodland Hills In orange robes. Once, a bolt struck her, In that she mistook The dissonance of nature For Stravinsky. XII The river is moving. The swan must be flying. XIII It was tomorrow all afternoon. It was raining And it was going to rain. The woman sat at the golden harp. Lara Dolphin A native of Pennsylvania, Lara Dolphin is an attorney, nurse, wife and mother of four. Her chapbooks include In Search Of The Wondrous Whole (Alien Buddha Press), Chronicle Of Lost Moments (Dancing Girl Press), and At Last a Valley (Blue Jade Press). ** Muddy Water Is it useful to see yourself in fragments? Or is it impossible to reconcile all the different pieces and points of view? The face in the water surprises; the reflection in the faces of others astonishes. Who are you really? And In your dreams? The you that shapeshifts so easily into aqueous behavior—is that a mask or the psyche turning inside out? But then you perceive the world in fragments too--coherent to a point, and then adorned with shapes and objects that don’t seem to belong--something always in flux, threads woven into shimmering light. The real world—is it actually “natural”? What does that even mean? Complex, overlapping, its edges ragged, its boundaries indistinct—is that universal, innate? The lines are uneven, angles skewed—is that organic? Why do I clothe myself in things I am not? What shelters me? What is the source of the rivers that flood my veins, my brain, the cosmic lucidity that currents its path around the stoned barriers of gravity? Or is that my idea of outer space, based on the photos of faraway galaxies, of emptiness and light, that feed my hunger for mystery? How true are they, how close to a representation of what is? What is? the eye can lie, just like the mirror, just like who we think we are-- is abstract just another word for riddle, for incomplete? Kerfe Roig Kerfe Roig resides in NYC where she finds that both she and her surroundings transform daily. ** Rocky River gushes from canyon swollen by melting snow rolls its boulder bed down the mountainside. Endless thirsty prairie awaits not far away. Joseph R. Larsen Joseph R. Larsen’s poetry has been featured in publications as varied as Dope Fiend Daily, Chaos Dive Reunion by Mutabilis Press, Equinox by hotpoet, Synkroniciti, Blonde on Blonde, North Country, The Panhandler, Spiky Palm, and the Texas Lawyer. When he is not restlessly writing, Larsen practices law including defending First Amendment rights. He was honoured in 2010 by the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas with its James Madison Award. ** River Therapy Webs of swooning capillaries any of the fine branching streams penetrating mountain flanks. Water wraps, swiftly surrounding as melting snow shivers its banks and the river’s hunger mounts its gush of refusing confinement flush as if her water broke. Say this morning is the beginning of the world. Who’s to know it’s not? Margaret Koger Margaret Koger was raised on an acreage near the Snake River and later moved to Boise, where she taught English and composition in the Boise Schools and at Boise State University. She is a Lascaux Prize finalist and her works have appeared in numerous journals as well as in What These Hands Remember (Kelsay, 2022) and If Seasons Were Kingdoms (Fernwood Press 2024). Instagram @maggiekoger ** The Butterfly Effect The jewelled beauty lands, sits: apatura iris resting on the oak Camera at hand I snap, maximum zoom, macro mode Later, on my laptop screen bottomless depths emerge Fractals unfold, unfurl, spread like rich inks bleeding into paper Browns become river banks dark purple's the water's edge White wing-eyes are morphing so that blooms of frost appear Resolved, it's winter snowmelt retreating, thin capillary streams feeding the river A tiny wing becomes a landscape organic patterns that keep repeating One flap from the purple emperor butterfly Rocky River's rambunctious story is revealed Emily Tee Emily Tee is a writer from the UK Midlands. She particularly enjoys ekphrastic writing and has had pieces published in The Ekphrastic Review challenges previously, and elsewhere online and in print, most recently The Lothlorien Poetry Journal. ** Sapphire Seduction My eyes play tricks on me-- is that azure river surrounded by sand? A mermaid’s teardrop shaped pendant? A spinning dolphin makes palm fronds dance like fans celebrating no hands. In crystalline crosswinds I’m distracted by loam so rich each toe digs in. Is that coral? And NW, do I conjure an oyster shell? I flounder to make sense of what my senses can’t conceive in slick seaweed grass. How to break free of razor-edged ultramarine glass? To be that sharp. Oh, no, the bends! Belly flop onto jagged reefs? A blunder! Bet I can float. Margo Davis Margo Davis maintains there’s nothing so rich as the interplay of visual art and poetry. In fact, she tries to get out of its way. Margo’s poems have appeared in many Ekphrastic Review issues, Equinox Journal, Passager and in 2026, Uncoupling (Lamar University Literary Press). ** benign a rare mollusk mass blooms cobalt in the saltwater rocky river of my breast, like a shiny metallic mylar balloon—a tiny octopod plucked from the copper blood bunch floating in ochre sands of fatty tissue as veins map pearly traces of milk from an ancient abundant sea Heather Brown Barrett Heather Brown Barrett is an award-winning poet in southeastern Virginia. She mothers her young son and contemplates life, the universe, and everything with her writer husband. She is a member and regular student of The Muse Writers Center, a member of The Poetry Society of Virginia, and a former board member of Hampton Roads Writers. Her work has appeared in Literary Mama, The Ekphrastic Review, Yellow Arrow Journal, Black Bough Poetry, OyeDrum Magazine, and elsewhere. She’s the author of Water in Every Room (Kelsay Books, 2025), her debut book of poetry. Website: https://heatherbrownbarrett.com/. ** Dreamscape A few nights ago, despite the howling wind that blew down the privacy fence shared with our new neighbors, I had the longest, quietest, nothingest dream of my life. Complete peace. The image was an abstract like those phosphenes that float about under your eyelids in vibrant colours. Only it hovered in view, accompanied by some abstract New Age music I couldn’t hum along with. The vision only wavered a bit without changing colors, clearly a harbinger of spring. There was a mound of dirty snow piled up in a parking lot, or maybe clouds hovering over the water and shoreline, the blue inlet brighter than the Mediterranean. Even stranger was the vibrant orange of sunflowers. Was this some Rorschach test? My first thought: “I’ve never witnessed anything like this.” But a few days later I found it, a painting called Rocky River online, published just days after my dream. Next I discovered the artist’s website. I sure hope she doesn’t charge me for my sleep. Alarie Tennille Alarie Tennille was a pioneer coed at the University of Virginia, where she earned her degree in English, Phi Beta Kappa key, and black belt in Feminism. She has now lived more than half her life in Kansas City, MO.Alarie received the first Editor’s Choice Fantastic Ekphrastic Award from The Ekphrastic Review, and in 2022, her latest book, Three A.M. at the Museum, was named Director’s Pick for the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art gift shop. ** Love is a Rocky River After looking up at the frothy clouds, we see a blue flower hypnotize us near the bayou. Pewter-colored icicles adorn as the winter cast. I remember ripples etched on an ornament we ignored after the hook vanished for the stone pine. For you, I want to find diamonds and scorpions and supergiant stars, but my insides are drunk on liquid marijuana. Time is the undercurrent. The currency of souls while we wash old soil by the banks. The matter of weighing down sanity. Let’s meow to touch moon skin. See, bluebirds petrify in a nest. Please, unlock my chilled hand tucked in your corduroy pocket. John Milkereit John Milkereit lives in Houston, Texas working as a mechanical engineer. He has completed a M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. His work has appeared in various literary journals such as The Comstock Review, Panoply, and previous issues of The Ekphrastic Review. His fifth collection of poems is forthcoming from Kelsay Books. ** Blue River I swim upstream oh my love in the river of your body like a salmon I surge through rocky rapids I leap for joy against time I swim to a mountain pool shape of a heart where dragonflies hover iridescent blue If you choose oh my love I shall enter we shall divide in our joining and again divide and again we shall cling we shall grow as one endlessly we shall float downstream through rocky rapids that shape us as the river grows wide We shall kick oh my love against confinement we shall tumble down a waterfall to the waiting hands to the breast of ocean to the adventure of a lifetime Joe Cottonwood Joe Cottonwood dwells in fog beneath redwood trees in the hamlet of La Honda, California.  Reimagining Hwy 1 Optimized for Public Transit, by Taylor Seamount (USA) contemporary. Click image for artist site. 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 Reimagining Hwy 1 Optimized for Public Transit, by Taylor Seamount. Deadline is April 11, 2025. 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 SEAMOUNT 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, April 11, 2025. 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.  Eve, by Dyane Jackson (USA) 2017 Core Questions That lore of Law, set garden piece, though end of peace in apple arms, the weapon of male dominance. Is spillage caused in guilty stance, an upward glance becoming stare - how dare she fall foul of such snake? This tree, a figure in own right, a rite of passage for the earth, skeletal trunk, craft part of art. As bones laid bare, so flesh, but fair - no cover up for other rib - indeed that cage, not hidden there. Pink lady, blush, for self-aware - but myth recorded, man by men. Delicious gala, celebrate. Though smarter when together walk, so, closer look, at core explored and question wisdom as received. 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 ** Temptation Succulent apple. Tempting to woman and man. A delight and curse. Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher has been writing since 2010 and has had many micro-flash fiction stories published. In 2018 her book Shorts for the Short Story Enthusiasts, was published, The Importance of Being Short, in 2019 and In A Flash in 2022. She currently resides on Long Island, New York with her husband Richard and dogs Lucy and Breanna. ** Genesis According to Me The Skeleton looks too good-humored to be the devil, peeking from behind a tree, eyes more set on the Woman's genital and curvy contour than destroying mankind. The Woman is greedy, stripping the Tree of its fruits, and careless, dropping some of them for the dog to find, struggling to carry the weight of her pain. Nobody in the Garden seems powerful enough to defy their fate, just lustful and callous, follies that lead them to their downfall. Jackie Chou Jackie Chou is a writer from Southern California who has two collections of poetry, The Sorceress andFinding My Heart in Love and Loss, published by Cyberwit. Her poem “Formosa” was a finalist in the Stephen A DiBiase Poetry Prize. Besides writing, she loves to watch Jeopardy. ** The Original Temptation a midrash of Adam & Eve today I can no longer sing of the room, remembered, where you took me to that bed naked and barely ashamed, with excuses sewn to hide what we and others did until the dust is dust, as poems were falling into flesh, to catch the stars that smoldered, then burst in flame. That bed was a burning ground. The sheet I used as a cover, you yanked away and laughed, uncovering the dead. And rising, we arise. Hardness and softness mingled, flowing in combinations in our travail of pleasure, moaning and then weeping, syncopated breathing. Our limbs are weary in time, as long as a human life, and the twilight sky bleeds over the city's lights and is dulled in the brown river that moves and moves forever. The light through the closed curtains conducted a shadow play adapted out of romances in a vast, accusing quiet. Outside sounds of traffic, a plaintive siren calling, a door slamming we heard as if from a distant world. Can we gather the rain, drop by drop by drop, or purge the blurred hours, or forget the words that hurt? And now in my place of penance prayer is unconvincing and just as necessary to restore that lost road that leads us all to a garden, if any garden is left where I can return the apple. Royal Rhodes Royal Rhodes is a poet who studied religious and biblical literature for many years. His poems on subjects of life, death, and love have been published in numerous literary journals, including: The Ekphrastic Review, Quaci, Last Stanza Poetry, The Montreal Review, and elsewhere. ** Pearls Before Swine These apples are pearls before swine. Like Gretel discarding breadcrumbs, Eve has taken to discarding apples. Ripe and rosy as the day is long. Her arms are heavily laden. Tired of walking, wanting her sleep But Eve still has wild orchards. To visit and go scrumping. Wanting only to dance beneath Their untainted white blossoms To reach for the moon and stars And receive her strength and faith. Hold death in her arms. Rocked in a cradle Later to be discarded like garbage Like an apple core devoured. That is abandoned in a forest. Like a white butterfly Born of purity, innocence, With a seed of something to eternally grow. Following a path back to who knows where A house made of bread, cake, and sugar. Running from a stepmother, A woodcutter or to a God who will not forsake her. Mark Andrew Heathcote Mark Andrew Heathcote is an adult learning difficulties support worker. His poems have been published in journals, magazines, and anthologies online and in print. He is from Manchester and resides in the UK. Mark is the author of In Perpetuity and Back on Earth, two books of poems published by Creative Talents Unleashed. ** Death and the Maiden Death seeks the maiden. He is persistent. He lurks and hides, for she is lovely. Exquisite nymph, riotous rich, with life and sex and eggs. Fully-fleshed, upper realm woman. Infatuation crushes him. But also keeps his bones alive. Gifts him. Reasons to lurk, reasons to hide. If only she knew what spells she cast. What shadows befall her own. Trailing behind, sensing someone. When she turns, there is no one. Her shadow knows but cannot tell. What spectres covet her essence. She’ll discover them in time. When she’s tasted knowledge and become. Fully-fledged earth woman. For now, she is oblivious. Her beauty, a given. The sun worships her. Her skin, luminous. The earth gives her its apples, for one ripe fruit recognizes another. Death is captivated. Nothing rattles him more than this fulsome creature. Nothing makes him seek a soul more than she. When she bathes in the river, how he aches. In the ghost of his once-heart, in the burn of his once-loins. He watches. She with delicate steps who enters the sunlit waters that glitter and part. He watches. She who stretches her arms toward the sun. Curves and scent and golden bloom. So much life to his always death. The closest he will ever get. Nina Nazir Nina Nazir (she/her) is a British Pakistani poet, writer and artist based in Birmingham, UK. She has been widely published online and in print. She is also a Room 204 writing cohort with Writing West Midlands. You can usually find her with her nose in a book or on Instagram: @nina.s.nazir. She blogs regularly at www.sunrarainz.wordpress.com ** Second Thoughts What if I have second thoughts of the certainty of my nature or the doubts from the wager What if I look another way of the past I once lived or the future she could give What if she cannot see me of the mess I'm becoming or the beauty of her uncovering What if I never tell her of the truths this life holds or the lies that will unfold What if I leave her in joy of the bliss of not knowing or the evil I'll be sowing What if I have second thoughts Brendan Dawson Brendan Dawson - Scholar, Warrior, and Poet…but not always in that order. Brendan writes from his observations and experiences while traveling, studying, and working abroad. He is currently writing a collection of poetry from his time in the military. ** Emirati Paradise Therme Dubai’s islands in the sky rise above while Eve picks apples as death and death’s dog look on. Waterfalls and warm pools will not bring back God nor remembrance of all things good and gone. Lara Dolphin A native of Pennsylvania, Lara Dolphin is an attorney, nurse, wife and mother of four. Her chapbooks include In Search Of The Wondrous Whole (Alien Buddha Press), Chronicle Of Lost Moments (Dancing Girl Press), and At Last a Valley (Blue Jade Press). ** Loved by Death she stalked the orchard, filled with life, inadvertently spreading seeds as she walked -- alluring in kindness, pristine in ignorance, brazenly glutenous, all things Death could never be, so he hid within his knowledge, behind the Tree of Wisdom, ashamed of his continence, fearful his visage would decay her beauty, his obsession obscuring anything or anyone but her. Silently, Sarama waits, Patiently - hungrily for Death’s love. Tony Daly Tony Daly has been writing poetry since angsty days in the early 90s when he found an ancient tome containing his grandmother’s poetry. However, he didn’t start sending his work out to publications until after retiring from the U.S. Air Force Reserves in 2016, which leaves a rather voluminous pile of work still laying dormant, hidden in notebooks, on napkins, in margins of partially read study material, that is constantly reburied under new inspirations. For a list, that probably needs to be updated, of his published work, please visit https://aldaly13.wixsite.com/website or follow him on X @aldaly18. ** Going Nuts Let’s avoid identifying the fruits – no need to go nuts into centuries of arguments: strawberries, apples, figs, they all merit only a tease. Let’s leave it and welcome the once in a lifetime luck – to finally be able to take a look at the native cage of thy famous rib – creator of Eve – and ponder what an auspicious advantage it is to Adam’s ominous mud-birth! Beholding thy grasp, we can better adjust to her art nouveau trance as by her elated head on that pedestal of fruits against his mortified countenance. But, for the sake of the argument, let’s just accept a working hypothesis – "Eros' fruits of Eden’s provenance." Indeed, it is a high spot, the sun is smelting as if it’s on seventh heaven; bouncing off the walls as if having ants in its pants and unable to hold its horses; and this, clearly, is happening fast in this blazing yellow podcast where Adam is melted to the bone by the hottest question in heaven – only his eyes are left to follow her body beam deadly aware that he is unable to fulfill her dream: to see, but impossible to touch; to know, but unable to act; to sense thy holy impact, yet incapable to draw a single stroke on that blank biblical page. Yes, some may like it hot, though nobody is perfect, but suspecting the perfection around the corner is all that matters in such biblical tatters. By our corner here Eve is surely nursing an idea having fruit-loaded herself to the top as if to entice the entire mankind, walking with poise, eyes closed – it is clear she is in pretend mode in order to bluff his dog off and swiftly stuff the Eros’ fruit in Adam’s agape mouth grabbing at once his instantly muscled hand and taking him beyond Eden’s pristine ground! Heaven on earth, or the other way around – clues and contrasts echo in the flapping sound. The point is – to save thy primal hot tenor, because: what a ridiculous lost skeleton Adam was before the consummation of her dream fruit before she cut the passion’s Gordian knot and rescued the plot – just what a man needs to come to his senses, but then to muscle returns for life to elude the skeleton going nuts while looking for its rib… Ekaterina Dukas Ekaterina Dukas, MA in philosophy and philology, has studied and taught linguistics and culture at Universities of Sofia, Delhi and London, and authored a book on mediaeval manuscript art for The British Library. She writes poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning, and her poems have been honoured frequently by TER and its challenges. Her collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europa Edizioni, 2021. ** Oranges Were the New Black Adam, back then and alone in Eden’s garden After Lilith, suggested by some to be the first Was Eve, who was made from his rib, it’s said Just one rule to follow, to never pick the fruit But then tempted by Satan, chose to disobey In some ways, his representation being iconic What was at stake was the loss of immortality And expulsion from Eden, living a new reality Appearing as a skeleton would be quite ironic As an assured death was now the price to pay And nakedness was no longer seen to be cute So they attempted clothing themselves instead As for any future life, both accepted the worst But neither apologized, nor asked for a pardon Howard Osborne Howard has written poetry and short stories, also a novel and several scripts. With poems published online and in print, he is a published author of a non-fiction reference book and several scientific papers many years ago. He is a UK citizen, retired, with interests in writing, music and travel. ** Sun, Where Are You Sleeping Tonight? You appear as twilight of twilight, mustard folds, origami without paper. Your makeup is dust and imagination. You plant Earth with goldenrod, but I’ve been mistaken before—perhaps you seed the planet with corn. Knowledge is sparse. Leaves seldom found. I embrace a tree trunk for nourishment that took eons. When Eve bursts with a bushel of ruby sweetness, I unfold a bed for growth. Heat burns off grass. Bourbon dries up. In this unfolding, I better not destroy what’s left. Give a rib if asked. Rub brown fur behind the dog’s ear. Later, alert the garden that I will spade. When castanets murmur in the background, I want to dance for flesh. I want to muster back my soul. John Milkereit John Milkereit lives in Houston, Texas working as a mechanical engineer. He has completed a M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. His work has appeared in various literary journals such as The Comstock Review, Panoply, and previous issues of The Ekphrastic Review. In December 2023, Kelsay Books published his fourth collection of poems entitled, Lost Sonnets for My Unvaccinated Lover. ** Hellscape: The Apocalypse Comes To Town The joker drew me in, his eyes promising nirvana, of a sort. He strummed the tree, a double bass, vibrating Walk on the Wild Side, until ripe, ready apples fell with crisp abandon to my breast. I embraced them, an apple pie on my mind, spiced, a lattice crust, friends invited for coffee and a slice. Then, surprise, a sonic boom waved in, a backward thrust ripped my cheeks to bits. My feet dissolved, legs now steady Bunsen burners, torso jelling molten into plasma, as I bleach gold, then white. If rubber hands could pluck a charcoal twig from this tree, I’d sketch a picture of my pain, redraw this Teflon-coated hound who bites my knees, not pacified by tossing apples caramelised in the wind, as a cartoon pooch, no longer my tormentor. Joker laughs and laughs, and strums his songs. My atoms keep on cooking. It just never stops. Emma-Jane Peterson Emma-Jane is the co-author of a book of children’s Bible stories (Parragon) and has written prose and poetry for magazines in the UK and the US. ** Far From the Tree The apples were here first-- you think you own them, but no-- they lead, you follow Other fruits, other people, creatures, bones, roots, trees-- a tangled landscape There are no seasons here, only a golden glow, burning with desire Inside you grow wings, look up, leap into a river of stars Kerfe Roig A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/ (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/. ** November Harvest Years past, we loved apple-picking in early September, the farmer handing over a large slatted wooden basket. U-Pick. 75 cents a pound. The dog dancing, us running to the stubby rowed trees like we’d never seen fruit. Tilting my head up, I watched your hands funnel apples into mine, sweet harvest balanced against my breasts. But now I’ve left it too late. Shriveled rot hangs from dormant branches. The dog whines. My hands are cold. Was it always this hard, climbing a short metal ladder in the low afternoon sun, knees aching? Shading my eyes, I scan the orchard. There’s nothing to gather here now. Nothing healthy, nothing whole, to carry home. Janice Scudder Janice Scudder lives in Colorado. ** The Tempest Be it the sin That feeds the hungry- Be it the woman Vile or innocent Bringing down a plenty. For Be it the forbidden fruit That abides Invisible skewed skeleton Of rising knotted roots Reaching for the heaven- The pink magnolia That lives at Any height. Be it on the ground Be it at the end- Be it the sin That finds Them. Abha Das Sarma An engineer and management consultant by profession, Abha Das Sarma enjoys writing. Besides having a blog of over 200 poems (http://dassarmafamily.blogspot.com), her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Spillwords, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Sparks of Calliope, Trouvaille Review, Silver Birch Press, Blue Heron Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, here and elsewhere. Having spent her growing up years in small towns of northern India, she currently lives in Bengaluru. ** Eve-rybody’s Mother Gleaning armloads of fruit, head back, joy-wheeling, you whirl in turmeric glow. Hell crouches by the tree, hounds you, round-eyed, thin-ribbed, scheming a steal, even a fall, but you know nothing. That one curious bite that you share within a heartbeat, spins you off spineless into the shadows. O dew why have you turned to drought or squall? O weeds! O mosquitos! O sharp teeth! O leather coat! O forked tongue and bony pointing finger! O Eve – conceiving and grieving, slow breathing, push and pain. One son slays another and wanders off leaving you bone-pallid, lined like winter limbs, your sunny heart splintered down to the core. Are you spat out like a pip? Blood pools around the tree. A saffron finch begins to sing. Helen Freeman Helen started writing poetry and flash fiction whilst recovering from a car crash in Oman and got hooked. She has publications on several online sites and loves trying her hand at challenges presented by The Ekphrastic Review then reading the different interpretations chosen by editors. She currently lives in Edinburgh and her instagram is @chemchemi.hf ** Apple Villanelle All apples are Honeycrisp now, not as sweet as they were before. Eventually, they all turn brown. Really common, sold by the pound in every produce selling store. All apples are Honeycrisp now. Old cultivars are not around-- one rarely finds Braeburn anymore. Eventually, they all turn brown. Once, Granny Smith had fed the town with latticed pies and cidered cores. All apples are Honeycrisp now. At first bite they made quite the sound, with flesh as crisp as autumn's morn’. Eventually, they all turn brown. By October, boughs touch the ground, but no one picks fruit off the floor. All apples are Honeycrisp now. Eventually, they all turn brown. Jory Como Jory Como is an aspiring American writer residing in Christchurch, New Zealand. ** of snakes & men red apple burning to its core scorched earth in the beginning, rachel was barren like the earth. barren by land. barren by sea. barren by sky. and luke said to mary, “blessed be the fruit of your womb.” was this fruit the promised one or the prince of darkness? who bore the earth? a god, a devil, a mother? before the amoebas and monkeys and us, a bang exploded into the night sky like a mustard cloud spewing mustard gas with a mustard taste. a silk skein of sun-kissed webs covered skins and skulls. yellow bones searching for a skeleton a garden grew. and from it a tree bearing poisonous fruit. the fruit was red and glistening like lipstick-stained cheeks and dripping with temptation from a tree dripping with knowledge to a man dripping with sin. the man, who was evicted from the garden for claiming to be god, was squatting there with his pet snake. the snake told him there was a way to live without sin, a way to indulge without shame, a way to prosper without guilt - - find someone else to blame. snakes and men still framing eve Michelle Hoover Michelle Hoover is an amateur poet and professional wiseacre. She lives near a mountain on unceded Ute territory with her ornery feline, Stevie the Magnificent Marshmallow. She enjoys her toes in the grass, a hearty laugh, and a backstroke under a starry sky. Her work can be found in The Ekphrastic Review and The Haiku Foundation. ** Eve Death clings to the creak of wood the soft split of living time when you step away from the ribbed road to your future, you hear the grainy breath of lumber knowledge is harvested from seed to skin, surface all death’s envy lingers in his fingers in the splints of his brittle heart wormed thought shrivels in the sun death and god are in cahoots damming the rush of spilling juice fruit’s sweet joy is forbidden to the dry scythe of yellow teeth devouring the heartcore of lust you will not be bound desire your belly harbours bounty light showers your lifted head, hungry arms embrace apples abundance the dogs have a new mistress soil roils beneath your tread swirling rich earthy dust to savour you will escape unenlightened eden language bursting from your breast walk on Eve, you know more than them these watchful rigid restraining men Simon Parker Simon is a London based writer, performer and teacher. His work has been published in Cathexis NW, Gramercy Review, The Pomegranate London, The Mackinaw, The Ekphrastic Review and shortlisted by the BBC. He is an associate artist of Vocal Point Theatre, a theatre company dedicated to telling stories from and providing workshops for the marginalized. He also runs creative writing and reading groups for the homeless, socially excluded and vulnerable at the 240 Project. ** Hide and Seek Dear Eve I’m going to play a trick on you I hope you will like it. This time No sin No reproach No Garden of Eden No Lucifer Only fun and funny apples. Adam is playing hide and seek with you When you find him Tell him that he must be careful. Behind the apple tree It’s not a snake which is watching him It’s a dog And we know that all dogs like to eat bones More than apples. And since you are the apple of Adam’s eye Don’t keep all your apples for yourself Give him an apple a day Because he is looking a little skeletal. Jean Bourque Jean lives in Montreal. ** Eve in natural wonder and curiosity she seeks to understand she tests the rules and pokes the beast they said she was weak and foolish and of course there was a price to pay but Oh! how much we’ve gained Kaz Ogino Kaz Ogino is a Japanese Canadian living in Toronto. A lifelong artist, her practice has been enriched with poetry. Her goal is to look beneath the surface and explore what might be found. Curious, she is seriously prone to deep rabbit-hole diving. Her practice is all about the discoveries and wonders of the process, in making art and crafting poems. Kaz’s art and visual poetry can be seen on her Instagram accounts; artbykaz.ca and artbykaz.play. ** Jaundice What mad choreographer blocked out the scene with traipsing nymph gathering all the knowledge of Death we will ever need leaving only the bitter fruit of The Appreciation of Life Tree that flowers only once for each Cro-Magnon each Neanderthal and even further back to the alleged crime scene where we were bitten by a thirst an unquenchable curse that ever questions and no doubt asks too much of Paradise dan smith dan smith is the author of Crooked River and The Liquid of Her Skin, the Suns of Her Eyes. Widely published, his poems have been in or at The Rhysling Anthology, Deep Cleveland Junk Mail Oracle, Dwarf Stars, Gas StationFamous, Jerry Jazz Musician and Sein und Werden. Nominated for the 2025 Pushcart Prize, dan's most recent poems have been at The Ekphrastic Review Challenge, Five Fleas Itchy Poetry, Lothlorien Poetry Journal and dadakuku. ** My Choice You say that I was tricked Making it seem as if it was not my hands that lifted the fruit, not my lips that pressed against its skin, not me knowing the taste of fate even before I swallowed. Let it be known now! The underworld did not take me. I walked in, of my own free will, barefoot but uncowed. I carried the delight of spring with me, but made myself a throne from the shadows. The pomegranate did not bind me It crowned me. Every seed I swallowed, a promise, not a prison. A skeleton crew knelt at my feet, their empty gaze reflecting the stark truth: I was never a captive — I was the key. Aboveground, you speak of me with regret. But you do not see me here now do not see how the dead kneel, do not see how Hades himself moves aside to let me to pass. And for the last time, let me tell you this. I am not lost. I am a queen who has never been afraid of the dark. Nivedita Karthik Note: The My/Me and I in the poem refer to Persephone and her voice. I wrote the poem from her point of view. I wrote it as if to show she knew what she was doing, rather than be tricked into it. She would rather be a queen there, than a voiceless here. Nivedita Karthik is a graduate in Immunology from the University of Oxford. She is an accomplished Bharatanatyam dancer and published poet. She also loves writing stories. Her poetry has appeared in Glomag, The Ekphrastic Review, The Society of Classical Poets, The Epoch Times, The Poet anthologies, Visual Verse, The Bamboo Hut, Eskimopie, The Sequoyah Cherokee River Journal, and Trouvaille Review. Her microfiction has been published by The Potato Soup Literary Journal. She also regularly contributes to the open mics organized by Rattle Poetry. She currently resides in Gurgaon, India, and works as a senior associate editor. She has two published books, She: The reality of womanhood and The many moods of water. ** Musings for My Dearest Eve After the first bite of sweetest fruit, Did you feel your innocence dissipate? Your cells begin to slow Your skin to wrinkle Your bones to ache. Death was born to stalk you, Lurking until he could swallow you down. Without the first bite of sweetest fruit, Would we be tearing ourselves apart today? Setting the world on fire Fueled by hate and uncertainty Filled with toxins and plastics and emptiness Our children scared, elders lost With the rest of us trapped in artificial prisons. Before the first bite of sweetest fruit, Would you be able to resist? I beg you for the truth. Would you save us from pain and loss Despair and death-- Or was the taste so seducing, Bringing your children to their knees everyday Fighting for their own salvation, You would still gather every fruit and guzzle them down again and again. It’s alright if you would. Most of us are gluttons for such temptations, We inherited that from you. And the world contains towering oaks, mountain creeks Green frogs and soft infants Foggy mornings, snowy nights. It’s not too late for us to make amends Before death sneaks up to swallow us down. But please pray for us, you at least owe us that. Samantha Gorman Samantha Gorman, a lifelong lover of books, lives in Western Pennsylvania. After taking several creative writing classes, she found her voice and had begun the adventure of becoming a writer. She writes poetry, short fiction, and is working on her first novel. ** First Kiss on Earth We kiss. Not once, not twice. We kiss more times than we have numbers. Death watches from behind a tree. With each kiss we are stronger. Wild dog watches from afar. Each kiss a beckoning. Death shrinks. We gather pomegranates, we share seeds mouth to mouth. Wild dog comes to our side, squeezes puppies from the womb. Kiss me. Kiss dog, kiss pups. Death is nowhere. Joe Cottonwood Joe Cottonwood dwells in fog beneath redwood trees in the hamlet of La Honda, California. ** Mother Tongue What the bones know lingers in the amber of millennia, and by now, Eve, you perceive how the parts create a whole conscience howling at the sun. Each day dawns from a first cry of hunger, and still you gather sanguine apples, pomegranates, figs rich as honey. Holy prayers for your hallowed belly. Oh Eve, how we forget God sends the rain for the upright and sideways beasts alike, and how we labor to blame, ashamed to admit that we too would bite the fleshy fruit of knowing, sweet juice like blood flowing from our hollow mouths. Heather Brown Barrett Heather Brown Barrett is an award-winning poet in southeastern Virginia. She mothers her young son and contemplates life, the universe, and everything with her writer husband. She is a member and regular student of The Muse Writers Center, a member of The Poetry Society of Virginia, and a former board member of Hampton Roads Writers. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Literary Mama, The Ekphrastic Review, Yellow Arrow Journal, Black Bough Poetry, OyeDrum Magazine, and elsewhere. She’s the author of Water in Every Room (Kelsay Books, 2025), her debut book of poetry. Website: https://heatherbrownbarrett.com/. ** The Garden of Eating "Current unrest was mild in Britain, compared to other parts of Europe. Even in the United States they were having troubles of protest and unease, a new class of urban poor uniting and demanding privileges…" Anne Perry, The Angel Court Affair Death watched her pick the apples; and the apples, red and ripe, were filled with the possibility of joy and sweet desire. See, the winds of change said how her little dog's ears are perked up? How the garden air is threatened with the haunting sounds of her lost love? The key-shaped spade had never worked on stubborn roots; the smiling skeleton was her proof -- how he'd wished that he could stay, eating apples to forget their disagreements the games they'd played for days to pay for refrigeration -- a modernized menu that groaned with questions: cheddar cheese, or cream, whipped to top the pies; a dash of cinnamon to save the taste of flesh forever... Outside the window, a picture-perfect orchard had been flush with fall -- a honeymoon in Normandy, a class in crusts -- how to survive when times were flaky though the apples had blushed so much before the June-Drops we thought forever could never stop. Laurie Newendorp Laurie Newendorp lives and writes in Houston where she attended The University of Houston for a Master's Degree in Creative Writing (Poetry.) `She has been a dedicated volunteer, working -- among other roles with children -- as a Great Books teacher and costume matron. Honoured many times by The Ekphrastic Review's challenges, her book, When Dreams Were Poems, explores the relationships between art, poetry and life. Mentioned in the poem, the June-Drop apple falls un-ripened and out-of-season. Apple season is usually September through December, and the June-Drops cannot mature without the seasonal nutrition provided by the tree. The June-Drops are tart, but with added sugar, can be cooked and used as jelly. ** Without Adam Without Adam, I strip the tree. Within my Eden, I found no man to hold to and catch on, to fall with and be blamed for taking down further, all is saffron wash for earth and burnt sienna strokes. Missing firmament, I am caressed by elation. Laughter peels for the stars inside. I revel across Paradise stage right, cascading the red hearts embrace of apples like a soubrette. He could never enter this core that’s perhaps made of j’amais vu. He’d watch in the wings far from me, call out a line he thought I long lost, let it fire and quench my pause for dramatic effect; but not a soul is here. Only Death and mongrel lech, sneering around the tree where I arch, steal with old gazes; as I know the tree. Adam, if he were waiting, crestfallen at my insouciance as to whether he had hatched a plan to stomp on Ares, from a rocket shell to see ever-distant territory, insatiable and empty. I look to Aphrodite, and she says “Abundance is reaping only what can be replenished.” Without a first, I last. No seed or cider to swallow and be ripened by. The tree keeps on yielding. Iris Quinn Iris Quinn's poem Sub Rosa Formation was selected by artist Hannah Berta as the Artists' Choice poem inspired by her work Muse Garden Rugosa in the fourth annual Ekphrastic Poetry collaboration between Page Gallery (Camden, Maine) and The Poets Corner, 2024. ** Literally Eve Repeatedly, I have been told that the way to appreciate modern art is to stand in front of it and let the art speak to me. I have done this in some of the finest galleries in the world – the Met, MOMA, the Guggenheim, the Morgan Library, the Frick, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (before the heist), the Getty, the Uffizi, the Smithsonian, the Van Gogh in Amsterdam (as well as the interactive experience) and the Dali in St. Petersburg (the American St. Petersburg, not the Russian one.) Then, next month, the Louvre and Musee d’Orsay will be added to the list. Guess what. Art doesn’t speak to me. I am cursed with a hyper-literal mind. I see the paint on the canvas; I see the palette of colors and how they have been arranged. I can even appreciate what the artist is trying to say, Then, its like a bad cell phone connection – I get half the words but not the message. Jackson Pollock is a good example. For me, Silver Over Black, White, Yellow, and Red, 1948, is just that – silver, black, white, yellow and red paint splattered haphazardly. I acknowledge that it holds my attention as my gestalt tries to form its randomness into patterns it has seen before. I would quibble though that the silver is gray as it doesn’t shimmer, and the red is rust. But then, the red of dried blood is actually a rust colour. As I write this, I am going outside every half hour to watch the progress of the Blood Moon, and its "blood" is more rust than red. But Pollock paintings don’t say anything to me. One viewer described their “encrusted, puddled, labyrinthine, and weblike surfaces” as “physically, erotically present.” Thank you, I know pornography when I see it and this isn’t it. Eve, by Dyane Jackson (no relation to Jackson Pollock) is another example. It is not repulsive, but is certainly not a pretty work of art. I am sure Ms. Jackson did not intend it to be pretty. She talks on her website about her experience while painting: “. . . struggling to paint something for hours---a face, a tree---when there's sort of a "pop" and you SEE, oh, it's brown right there! Or, I have it too pointy! In Eve she does indeed have a pointy, brown tree. And a pointy, brown dog, at least I think it is a dog. The two key figures are a woman (three straight, splayed lines where her long hair should be tell me it is a woman) and a skeleton (straight, splayed lines where the ribs should be tell me it is a skeleton.) The presence of the skeleton peering around the tree at the woman is obvious symbolism although I don’t for what. The skeleton is smiling so maybe they are playing a game of hide and seek. The woman is carrying a large basket of red apples, or maybe she is trying to hold twenty or so of them loose in her arms. Whichever, she is not doing a good job as three of them are falling to the ground. Is there symbolism in the number three? I don’t know. Note to Jackson Pollock: this is what red looks like. The woman knows she is not doing a good job and has her head raised to the sky bemoaning her clumsiness. I didn’t paint it; I am just relating what it is saying to me. The composition is interesting, a diagonal from lower left to upper right. The arch of the woman’s body is mirrored in the bend of the tree trunk. The skeleton and the dog are looking at the woman, likely wondering, like me, why she is dropping the apples. I assume the woman’s name is Eve implying the tree is the Tree of Knowledge. I wish I had one of the apples to eat as my hyper-literal brain does not have the knowledge to understand what Ms. Jackson is saying. I noticed that she started a blog in 2011 to communicate with people interested in her work. I found a passage where she is explicitly talking to me: “For you non artists, any area with a strong light/dark contrast or bright color will first grab attention, also small detailed shapes and wiggly lines.” I also notice that Ms. Jackson abandoned her blog after a half dozen entries. Maybe that is what happened with Eve, perhaps the painting was declared finished cutting off what Eve was trying to say mid-sentence. I will finish it for her. Literally, Eve is crying out to the heavens, “Olly olly oxen free! Death, come out; the game is over.” Michael Field Michael Field was born in Maine and now lives in North Carolina where he transitioned from a career marketing technology to creative writing. He specializes in flash memoir, stream of consciousness essays, and insightful reflections. He has had multiple works recognized in literary contests including a first-place prize in the Friends of the Chautauqua Writing Center Adult Prose contest. His works have been published in magazines, literary journals, and an anthology, Memory as Muse. ** How They All Go The girl-- focused on her joy, her flower scene, her basket of fruit embodying her youth and unused body-- sees neither Death nor the Jackal, who spoil her plans from forming in the yellow morning with plots to put her down. The Jackal distracts her with its shrill bark, circling her, spilling her fruit, cutting off her escape, while Death sneaks in-- unwanted dance partner-- and taps her elbow. Brennan Thomas Brennan Thomas is a Professor of English at Saint Francis University in Loretto, Pennsylvania. She has published short fiction and poetry in several online magazines, including Right Hand Pointing, Rue Scribe, Short Beasts, and Eunoia Review. ** The Golden Afternoon Conspicuously, Adam isn’t there, the age-old bias still in play, as if ‘twas only Eve who ate, or hood-winked an untutored boy. Then, lurking there behind the tree – not Heaven’s Hound which chases the reluctant down with boisterous barks – but Death and Death’s Coyote waiting for the lady’s back to turn. She’s laden down with excess fruit, unable to content herself, and craving ruddy encores until all the juicy savor’s gone – the afternoon oblivious to Death and Unfulfilled Desire. Jeremiah Johnson Jeremiah Johnson got his MA in Rhetoric in 2003 and then ran off to China to teach for a decade. His work has also appeared in the Sequoyah, The Ekphrastic Review and The Society of Classical Poets. He is currently a teacher of English Composition and World Literature at the University of North Georgia. ** Harvest In the fabled garden, Eve gathers ripened apples. She fills her arms with so much fruit that some of it falls to the ground. Hurry, Eve, don’t waste the day-- for yellow leaves colour the air with the scent of impending decay. Her Adam left so long ago that she rarely thinks of him now. Adams come, and Adams go, but trees of knowledge bloom anew. Their apples impart wisdom or inspire doubt. They raise questions and prompt debate. Apples move eaters with their beauty or challenge them to question fate. With each bite, the knot entangling truth and myth unwinds. Bottom Line: Apples open minds. So, Eves in Edens everywhere, gather your apples while you may, before the last fallen leaf has browned, because death may hide behind the next tree with his devouring hound. Catherine Reef Catherine Reef's poetry has appeared in several online and print journals. She has published more than forty nonfiction and biographical works on subjects including Sarah Bernhardt, Queen Victoria, and Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. A graduate of Washington State University, Catherine Reef lives and writes in Rochester, New York. ** Eve’s Harvest The air is gold, I’m standing tall: How many apples make a Fall? I came in Spring: the cold was bright, And all the tree was hung with white. White turned to green; the air was fresh; I saw another, all of flesh: A Summer man, who stripped a bough To make a crown. It’s faded now; He says that Winter’s on its way. What that may be, he cannot say, Only he knows it will be cold; But here today the air is gold. While he is foraging alone, I see another, all of bone: Winter, maybe, with Winter’s beast. But look: the tree brings forth a feast Of life! My arms can’t hold them all. Each one a sun, a flaming ball: How many apples make a Fall? How many apples make a Fall? Ruth S. Baker Ruth S. Baker has published in some online magazines including The Ekphrastic Review. She has a special love for animals and visual art. ** Your Core Is an Orchard, Brims with the Wisdom of Apples Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in ~ Leonard Cohen, lyrics from “Anthem” Ripe with promise a basketful of potential you dropped to the ground traversed unknown terrain. On your journey what did you encounter gullies and ridges ditches and peaks the occasional worm? Despite the unevenness the unexpected bruises and wounds along the way did you choose wisdom follow the high road honor your core? When confronted with obstacles challenged by a landscape fraught with imperfections were you determined to sow seeds of light? Jeannie E. Roberts Jeannie E. Roberts is an artist, a poet, and the author of nine books, including On a Clear Night, I Can Hear My Body Sing (Kelsay Books, 2025). She is an Eric Hoffer and a two-time Best of the Net award nominee. She serves as a poetry editor for the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs and finds joy spending time outdoors and with loved ones. ** good Eve ning oh goddess cast thine eyes upon this orchard of lust in mine basket hie thee hither dear Adam from behind yon apple tree lest I see thee for all that thou art not lest the asp doth kiss thy jackal's haunt lusteth thy forbidden wisdom Donna-Lee Smith Donna-Lee Smith loves the challenge of looking at a piece of art, finding the words to express her feelings and (when required) utter nonsense. Thank you, as always, Team Ekphrastic! ** Defiance She has gathered her apples like jewels in this garden of Eden a carnal carmine of hearts ripened with passion. She is tripping on sunshine a livewire of intent a blaze of delight a living, loving, longing woman just being. Look at her laugh in the face of Death who hides tremulous from this golden exhale as the seeds of her secret fall to earth with a sigh. Yes, she will take temptation if this is the reward - succulent, sweet cornucopia of joy mystery of the flesh revealed - a feast. And the air warms to a yolk yellow: the bright birth of a new world. Siobhán Mc Laughlin Siobhán Mc Laughlin is a poet and Creative Writing facilitator from Co. Donegal in Ireland. Her poems have appeared previously in The Ekphrastic Review. She has also been published in literary journals including The Poetry Village, The Honest Ulsterman, Drawn to the Light Press and more. She enjoys ekphrastic writing as the artwork provides a narrative of its own. Find her on Instagram @siobhanmcl7 (she no longer uses 'X') ** Evelution So much knowledge it’s heady and exhilarating as she dances away seeding ideas and change in the wake of her overflowing arms Life and death suddenly have deeper meaning neither can exist without the other now that she knows what lurks inside each fruit They become her a hundred breasts of food flowing through her belly to nurture the earth and birth children she is goddess and guardian The jealous god disapproves poisoning bark and root he will punish her life force the violence of manhood hidden under skin and dying to the bone For a brief moment ecstasy was within reach balance achieved until hounded forever pursued for existing without permission R A Ruadh R A Ruadh’s poetic universe is where farm life, erotic questions, war zones, and snowstorms are all related. With deceptively lyrical simplicity the poet takes on everything from the ravages of a child’s murder to a maple tree’s promise of new life, and erotic odes to garlic. Her award-winning work has been published internationally in book form, annual and quarterly collections, and online editions. An unrepentant Red Sox fan and proud grandmother, R A Ruadh lives on a farm in Mi'kma'ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi'kmaq People, also known as the Canadian Maritimes. ** The Wondrous Daughters of Eve: a Sijo Sequence I. Unrepentant of their sins, men watch as we struggle and suffer. They lurk. They creep. They troll. They catcall. They boss. They scheme. They attack - constantly tormenting, be it gleefully or unwittingly. II. No wonder we wander away, and no wonder we wonder. No wonder we are fearful, and no wonder we are brave. No wonder we love. No wonder we loathe. No wonder we are numb. III. Men can lie. Men can cheat. Men can steal. Men can kill. Men can destroy, But our hair, our lips, our breasts, our asses, our wombs, our brains, our souls Are held to much higher, perpetually changing standards. IV. No wonder we love apples, and no wonder we hug trees. No wonder we wear miniskirts. No wonder we refuse to shave our legs. No wonder we are so tempted, and no wonder we, ourselves, tempt. V. They keep breaking and breaking the commandments that they wrote In the name of a god that supposedly looks just like them, Whereas we are expected to obey without question. VI. No wonder we are considered vain. No wonder we don’t care. No wonder we read so much. No wonder we are curious. No wonder we ask. No wonder we believe. No wonder we doubt. 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 200 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 put into 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. ** To Dyane Jackson Regarding Eve You paint her as the truth disclosed of will that wisely God imposed in each of us who falls as well to find the faith in which we dwell to bear the brunt of gathered blame for sins that jaundiced eye will name as basket of the ills deplored that in the mirror though ignored will in delusion see reprise as dread assured by vain surmise of fear that fame can mobilize invoking cloak of evil guise on courage that would dare oppose the arrogance so lacking clothes. 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.  Rocky River, by Cookie Wells (USA) 2024. Click image for artist site. Dear Writers, I'm again honoured to curate The Ekphrastic Review's biweekly challenge. Over the next two weeks, artist Cookie Wells and I invite you to spend time with her painting, Rocky River, and share whatever its inspiration creates. For many years, Cookie was a figure painter. Wanting a change, she switched to abstract about 8 years ago. Her passion is colour and texture. She is a native of Texas, born in Beaumont. She received an art degree from Lamar University and worked 30-plus years in graphic arts. She is now a full-time artist and member of Archway Gallery, a co-op gallery in Houston, Texas. Write On! Sandi Stromberg ** 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 Rocky River, by Cookie Wells. Deadline is March 28, 2025. 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 WELLS 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, March 28, 2025. 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.  Deserted Highway, Mojave Desert, photography by Alexis Rhone Fancher (USA) 2025 To Lend Her Own Eyes There’s always a kid in back, clicked quietly free of her seatbelt if there is one, up on her knees to watch the minutes recede in the rear window. She sees a reverse vista—the golden expanse of forsaken instants we didn’t note the mix of scents the wind blew in over our left arm in sun while we steered, sweet creosote’s particles whirling like stars into the black holes of our nostrils —without a word or a shout. The child shudders with an aloneness that bursts out like a thousand cactus wrens from the nest of her heart into the silver-black mountains above the haze. We’re useless to her or worse, except that we drive these hours between our nowheres, we stay in our lane, leave the radio on its AM Spanish romances strummed and tremolo’d through flurries of static snow, and maybe it’s better somehow we have no idea what beauty burgeons behind her brow as the light grows longer bronzing the scrub calling for her return to the burning dancefloor of fringe-toed lizards and sidewinders. So we’re blind but for the road, but for her eyes on the light we leave and leave the mountains our wind-carved tombstone. Do we somewhere inside us know she’ll come here again, passing under the shadows of lonely crucifix poles and their high-strung wires to whisper-cry to our souls, to wonder, grieve, to lend her own eyes in their deepened arroyos, to reckon slow how impossible it is to see a thing let alone one another as we drive and drive looking for home? Jed Myers Jed Myers is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Learning to Hold (Wandering Aengus Press, Editors’ Award, 2024), and previously The Marriage of Space and Time (MoonPath Press) and Watching the Perseids (Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award)—as well as six chapbooks. Recent honours include the Northwest Review Poetry Prize, the River Heron Poetry Prize, and the Sundress Chapbook Editor’s Choice. Poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Rattle, The Poetry Review, RHINO, Poetry Northwest, Southern Indiana Review, The Southeast Review, and elsewhere. Myers lives in Seattle, where he’s editor of Bracken. ** The Desert Road Has Thinned Down to This. The road knows it is now another star in a galaxy of stars gone empty, the heat rising like apology that buckles from the too-dry air. The air chokes and then slithers towards anything but here. The road has felt the small murder of a man ‘s foot, the crushing ego of a tire and knows how it is just a moment thing, like moonlight and mist and love. The road remembers how the desert pressed the breath out of the people who drove here, their cars sputtering, the hotslap air through the window cracks. And when the people got out and stretched and tried to cool themselves, their legs went stem, their arms flying, flightless. The sun above a pulse, a pulse. Francine Witte Francine Witte’s flash fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous journals. Most recently, her stories have been in Best Small Fictions and Flash Fiction America. Her latest flash fiction book is Radio Water (Roadside Press.) Her upcoming collection of poetry, Some Distant Pin of Light is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press. She lives in NYC. Visit her website francinewitte.com ** Ragged Psalms “Awake. Shake dreams from your hair. My pretty child, my sweet one. Choose the day and choose the sign of your day.” Jim Morrison et al, “Ghost Song” 1. Riding shotgun, Crow’s face blank and bland against the open window like a dog’s, basking in the breeze. The road was wide and the road was empty and the road was endless ahead of them. Morrison’s uneasy melancholy from the speakers. Raggedy gnawed on her stubby fingertips again until Jill snapped at her hand. Rolled up the dregs from the crumpled packet of American Spirit and they all pulled at the nicotine teat. Sang along with Jim as the night drifted up behind them. 2. Raggedy didn’t quite trust the hitchers, or anyone really, but she was glad for company on the journey west. A peculiar couple. Crow didn’t speak at all. Jill said he was an old soul, spanning centuries with an eternal beating heart. Crushed velvet and pirate ruffles and a lingering perfume like an old church. An armload full of Byron and dusty old folklore from Transylvania. Before New Orleans, Raggedy would have laughed out loud, but now, she’ll believe anything. 3. She didn’t want to leave. The Crescent City. She’d grown used to the rhythms of the river, the way the boardwalk saxophones scratched their sigils into the night sky with sound. 4. She’d gotten used to the heavy lullaby of the blues. 5. And all the booze that was hers for the taking in a sea of plastic cups. She was a long way from Canada, but she liked the way she disappeared into the otherworld, a place of barefoot flower children, ragtag punks, and vampires. She blended in with all the gleaming hardware stuck to her body like a human pincushion. She had wanted to be far away, as far away as you could go from what you knew before. 6. Cacti bunched and scraggly, clawing their way up into the reefs of clouds. Green and purple beads roped over the rear-view mirror. Raggedy had felt so free, flashing her assets on Bourbon Street, sucking back strawberry booze from giant alien-faced bottles. In a humid bar that was once a Storyville brothel, lost in the music, she had cradled a small lost boy in her sticky arms, and cried with him over all the things he fled in Salt Lake City. When he had finally emptied of weeping, he wiped his face on her denim sleeves, pulled back, and said, why would you name yourself after a broken doll? 7. Crow still panting, open smile against the open window. Coltrane now, moody, complicated, serenading the falling night. Jill had to pee. Raggedy veered to the highway’s shoulder. Each of them emptied themselves to the darkness at the side of the road. 8. Raggedy had no idea what waited for them when the desert gave itself up for the ocean. She had never seen the cliffs and how they tumbled down to the coast, to the seam between here and forever. 9. Look, Jill said, when they finally pulled into a gas station under a flickering neon sign. Something like an Ed Ruscha painting, a dimly flashing promise: Najah Oasis. Just leave us here, okay? Crow’s hands raking packages of crisps and peanuts into his pockets. Raggedy wiped the windshield methodically, clearing her line of sight for the distance ahead. She watched the strangers walk across the lot, going anywhere, going nowhere, going gone. 10. Venice Beach, Los Angeles. A rusty orange cat perched on her fender, then her dashboard. He stayed a few days, and exited on Hollywood Boulevard. She felt the thrum of history in every new ghosting. She wound her way finally up to Vancouver. Stayed for near a year. 11. Her favourite place is the beach, and the gay nightclubs up the hill are a refuge. After sweating out all the martinis she could imbibe on the dancefloors at the circuit parties, Raggedy loves to go down to English Bay and listen to the sea. Watch the dawn being born anew. Sometimes she sleeps underneath the stars in the shadow of the totem poles. She feels safe there. She can feel their power. She cuts things out of rave flyers and discarded fashion magazines, out of old art books she digs out of dumpsters. She scribbles poems on them, arranges the images in unexpected ways, glues them into place. One day she will start to come together. One day, she will change back her name. Lorette C. Luzajic Lorette C. Luzajic is the founding editor of The Ekphrastic Review and The Mackinaw. She has published hundreds of ekphrastic prose poems and small fictions in journals and anthologies. She is also an award-winning visual artist with collectors in forty countries so far. ** The Empty Road The Mojave Desert astounds me It looks so much like the ceiling of the Brosnan Caves dusted with millet It doesn’t wear gloves because it’s too hot Its sky is a pail of water that spills into the ether It’s the gleam of a snail’s trail left on Aphrodite’s thigh that quenches the thirst of Mariantonietta Peru who walked across the Mojave after she walked across the Sahara and found no one at home Richard Modiano While a resident of New York City Richard Modiano became active in the literary community connected to the Poetry Project where he came to know Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, William S. Burroughs and Ted Berrigan. In 2001 he was a programmer at Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center, joined the Board of Trustees in 2006, and from 2010 to 2019, he served as Executive Director. The Huffington Post named him as one of 200 people doing the most to promote poetry in the United States. Modiano is the winner of the 2022 Joe Hill Prize for labour poetry and is a Pushcart Prize nominee. ** The Open Road At high noon, sunlight across cement. Mountains loom ahead, Baba in the driver's seat. I look for birds swift of wing, flat shrubs huddled under baby blue skies. We read the land without GPS or maps, and Mom marks time with her hands, stretching out her arm: departure, the top of her shoulder; arrival, the thin wristband of her watch. Hours pass, summer wind against my face. Where are we on your hand? my siblings and I ask, as we inch ever closer to the wrist watch, seeking the thin sliver of the sea. Elanur Williams Elanur Williams writes from New York City, where she lives with her husband and daughter. She wrote this poem inspired by the summer road trips she took with her family in Turkey, where she lived as a child. The image reminded her of the many juxtapositions of Turkey's structurally complex terrain-- a mosaic of plateaus, valleys, mountain ranges, and gorgeous coastal regions. ** The Way-Back My brother & I rode in the way-back, filmy glass rectangle framing our view like a curtain of mountain mist. Facing each other in leatherette jump seats, so far removed from the bulk of the station wagon we might have been strangers on a train, an invisible table jostling our knees while surreal Western scenes zipped backwards. Miles of tarmac and tumbleweed vanished in the fumes of cheap gas. We had seen this take before. We never would see it again. Heat shimmying over the road like ghostly dancers doing the Frug to the roar of surf music, hundreds of miles from blue shore. A lunar late-night-movie landscape-- loyal dog barking and doomed Bogart stumbling from the rocks to give himself away. In the shadows of High Sierra, we were let loose for feeding and watering at a bleached trading post. Waiting our turns for the lone bathroom. Peering into a cracked glass case—tangle of turquoise and nickel lighters and a beached ceramic mermaid with crooked curled Red Velvet lips, removable breasts for salt and pepper. Someone gunned her down, like any outlaw. Three nicks in one tit and the deathblow drilled into the lurid pink slab holding her heart. Angele Ellis Angele Ellis's work has appeared on a theater marquee, in museums, and in over ninety publications. Her first collection of poems, Arab on Radar (Six Gallery), won a fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts for its poems on her Arab American heritage. She also is author of Spared (A Main Street Rag Editor's Choice Chapbook) and Under the Kaufmann's Clock (Six Gallery), a hybrid of poetry and short fiction inspired by her adopted city of Pittsburgh. ** California Dreaming Driving Borrego Springs Road at dusk feels like a lost highway dream. A set David Lynch could have used to film where monsters of our minds are metal sculptures of extinct species, mythic birds and beasts, are irradiated insects like rust colored scorpions poised to strike puny humans, in vehicles and out, or are fire spitting dragons that traverse two lanes and loom, their terrible aspects assaultive as moonrise in the desert, as the second coming of nightmares whose unknown origins make the shadows they cast come alive. Alan Catlin Alan Catlin has three books scheduled for this year: Landscape for Exiles (Dos Madres), The Naked City, short stories (Anxiety Press) and Work Anxiety Poems (Roadside Press.) His Still Life with Apocalypse is scheduled with Shelia Na Gig press in 2026, if we live long enough to see 2026. ** Snapshot of Dreamscape As in a dream, I’m driving nowhere on a nowhere road. I’m in the wrong lane, passing a shadow who lurks at my right, chasing me, wanting some trinket or trophy, though I never see his face. As in a dream drawn by advanced AI, I could erase amber desert scrub, substitute miles of rows of corn, replace the corn with trees-- same highway, destination, wide- angle lens. As in a dream, I focus on what’s in front of me: rockface daggering sky like a tooth. It’s not the place I’m bound, my notion of paradise, just a spot that exists, as in this same exhausting dream, at a point in the future I won’t reach before an alarm awakens me with my racing heartbeat in the dark. Ace Boggess Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, most recently Escape Envy. His writing has appeared in Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Hanging Loose, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes, watches Criterion films, and tries to stay out of trouble. His forthcoming books include poetry collections, My Pandemic / Gratitude List from Mōtus Audāx Press and Tell Us How to Live from Fernwood Press, and his first short-story collection, Always One Mistake, from Running Wild Press. ** A la Mode Pie David Lynch drives into a sunset of off kilter horizons toward that hard to reach place around the corner from Mulholland where all the crime is squeezed from romance and every femme fatale is just an angel in disguise because nothing is ever lost and all the highways lead to some lonely diner on the outskirts of Paradise where the underbelly isn’t always reaching for the sky and the pie is always a la mode with the jukebox playing all your favourites over and over like it’s reading your mind dan smith dan smith is the author of Crooked River and The Liquid of Her Skin, the Suns of Her Eyes. Widely published, he has had poems in or at The Rhysling Anthology, Deep Cleveland Junk Mail Oracle, Dwarf Stars, Sein und Werden and Gas Station Famous. Nominated for the 2025 Pushcart Prize, dan's most recent poems have been at Five Fleas Itchy Poetry, dadakuku, Jerry Jazz Musician, Lothlorien Poetry Journal and The Ekphrastic Review. ** Deserted Here, hope never dies, in spite of all evidence. Here is the graveyard of Howard Hughes ingenuity in rows of retired warplanes, moored metal sails flashing for miles. Not for nothing is the infamous town called Tombstone, yet still they came, hell-bent for leather. Trucks and horses are traded beneath willful thunderheads and dust devils. Here are many thieves, but rarely a moth has eaten, and never has rust destroyed. Godforsaken and accursed in blistering clarity, it stills you into a lizard on a rock, and you can wonder yourself to death, not at the why of it all, but the how of it all. The land of enchantment is harsh and stony and towering in its vastness, but with the most delicate and fragile survivals scattered across it, both ephemeral and timeless at once. The light falls over it mightily, an unblinking dare to show yourself. Lizbeth Leigh Jones Lizbeth Leigh Jones holds a degree in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona. Her nonfiction and short fiction have been published in Compendium, Persona, and Bainbridge Island Magazine. Her poem “Apocalyptic Us” has been published in the current issue of Cagibi. She currently lives in Atlanta where she works as a freelance writer and editor and is a member of the Broadleaf Writers Association. ** Endless Velocity Consider that behind the intimidating glare of this hundred-and-eight degrees of desert heat is an arcade of stars banking through galaxies that we can only sort in our tiny minds by our frail human standards of understanding expressed in a language with a mere twenty-six letters to shape into the size of the truths that need to be told. I have a mind that sees dust rising in the distance and wants to describe a waterfall flowing skyward, a ridge of mountains calling to the lies one wants to stop living. I am captive in the turn of these wheels rumbling this stretch of nothing-to-see-of-ease here highway. I am obliged to keep moving one uncomfortable foot in front of the other. One turn at the place where there used to be a corner, a market, a home, a recognizable country, a standard of chivalry, an ounce of expected respectable behaviour. I am compelled toward silence. I once wrote speeches and sermons and lessons to deliver. Now, I am a lowered anchor in a pit of flailing venom. Peggy Dobreer Peggy Dobreer is the founder and curator of Slow Lightning Lit, and editor-in-chief of Slow Lightning: Lit anthologies, and a few “uncommon books of poetry.” Peggy is a Los Angeles based poet, choreographer and somatic practitioner. A four-time Pushcart nominee, she is author of three published collections: Forbidden Plums, 2021, Glass Lyre Press, Drop and Dazzle, 2018 and In the Lake of Your Bones, 2012, with Moon Tide Press. ** Two Worlds Lift your eyes up to the hills hewn out of blue granite, gabbo, tonalite, and quartz. Once, the earth’s core spilled over, raining boulders, a giant toddler stacked and disarranged these blocks. Two worlds, mountain and desert, neither hospitable to those with no fur or feathers that might shield, no claws to dig a hollow in the ground. This is just a place we pass, a vista from the window. We’re drawn to towns beyond the hills. Stop and stand among the cholla and the brittlebush. At first sight, you’ll be convinced that nothing much lives in this yellow desert, below a narrow belt of cloud. But look what’s camouflaged by brush, not evident unless you stand for hours bent on capturing the slightest movement of a lizard or jackrabbit. In the cool shade of prickly pear, the cactus wren has made its nest, blue eggs like fallen bits of sky. Soon you’ll see traces of a sidewinder, eyebrows etched in sand, impressions waves make at the ocean’s edge. You’ll learn by watching what seeds and fruits are good to eat, where water lies. Take this knowledge with you when you go, but only if your life depends on it. Robbi Nester Robbi Nester is a retired college educator and author of five books of poetry, the most recent of these being About to Disappear, an ekphrastic collection of poetry to be published by Shanti Arts. She has also edited three ekphrastic anthologies. Currently, Robbi curates and hosts two poetry reading series monthly on Zoom. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Vox Populi, SWWIM, One Art, and many other places, and will appear in forthcoming anthologies, A Golden State and Keystone: Poets of Pennsylvania. Learn more at http://www.robbinester.net. ** Silence of Silence I am lost and I’m driving alone Why did I think I was lost? When did violet rain exile? Death rises like smoke Lucky sunshine opens silence, leaving awe Wind blowing frees spirits whispering unlocks hearts Nature's touch of words, stillness melts in my heart My words disappear like dust but I write poetry with my language of sand No season changes who I am, the roots of trees Mojave desert, where I can love without worrying about tomorrow No fence can stop me from blooming Time has passed so quickly And get a cup of coffee 99 miles stop, gas station, must fill gas The joshua tree remembers my teardrops My heart aches if I look back I can always turn around If I am not ready The wind runs to me in yellow shoes Who knows what is on the other side I am not sweating to cross the mountain I am not looking for belonging nor destiny I left without knowing where I’m going It must be tuesday morning It’s better to drive alone I am lost Tanya Ko Hong Tanya (Hyonhye) Ko Hong (고현혜) is an internationally published poet, translator, and cultural-curator who champions bilingual poetry and poets. She is the author of five books, including The War Still Within (KYSO Flash Press, 2019). Her poetry appears in Rattle, Beloit Poetry Journal, WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly (The Feminist Press), among others. Her segmented poem, “Comfort Woman,” received an honourable mention from the Women’s National Book Association. She holds an MFA degree from Antioch University, Los Angeles. ** If I Ever Got Married, It Would Be Like This Like that highway sparse Like each word that we ground out Like that blinding sun And like those vows we took Our hate will last forever 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 200 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 put into 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. ** Snowfall Concrete rises and falls with alluvial fans dry Cahuilla washes where road does not obey human engineering whimsies. In passenger seat between her knees she arranged her winter pack, sun caught dark hair with silvern strands which last night rested against my chest. Violinist’s brown eyes peered straight through the windshield read the line of lumbrous low clouds shrouding the mountain "Those clouds aren’t going anywhere soon." Scanning ahead it hit me. We were driving into a storm we should have turned back to the Hot Springs hotel connected by the desert highway where she told me in the shower she was sexually numb – fucked . by so many fake gurus during free love she put it. I continued to drive straight. Hypnotized by the rolling road. Lolled by memories of the touch of her lips on my cock, the taste of her cunt on my tongue. "Dreams are meant to come true" she said as we embraced and though I never entered her body we shared each other’s sex through the night. Clouds boiled up to 10,000 feet by the time we reached road’s end to join a group for winter snow camp. Up the Tramway we rose as the road reduced to ribbon, disembarked in a lost land at the trail head where the two of us made angels in the snow which amused the more experienced. When the blizzard struck we bedded down on the trail shared a down sleeping bag shivered through a night so cold it froze five gallons of water stiff. The next day, we made it back to the desert floor, separated like dips along the pavement she whistled the opening bars of the Kreutzer Sonata I heard her play with a philharmonic, entranced, though she was already gone when I dropped her in La Jolla no good bye, never to see her. Marc Petrie Marc Petrie has published three collections of poems and a novel. His work has appeared in City Lights Review, Book of Matches, and the American Poetry Review, among others. Mr. Petrie teaches math and lives in Orange County, California with his wife and dog. ** An Oasis for Elders “I am dry down there,” she tells me as we drive through the Mojave. “As long as I can remember, I have been moist. Hot and eager.” She puts her hand on my thigh. I smile, then look back at the highway. keep both hands on the wheel. You never know when you are going to have to keep control. “But life rearranges your body. Sags and creaks are part of the deal,” she sighs. Then she gestures towards the desert. “But now between my legs sometimes it feels like this. Moisture keeps getting harder to find.” She shrugs, and pulls from her purse a small bag of YES® lubricant applicators. She dangles them from her fingers. “Sometimes you have to pay to play,” she whispers, then slides her other hand even higher. “How far is the oasis?" Gary S. Rosin Gary S. Rosin is a Contributing Editor of MacQueen’s Quinterly. His poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in various literary reviews and anthologies, including Chaos Dive Reunion (Mutabilis Press 2023), Cold Moon Journal, Concho River Review, contemporary haibun, Texas Poetry Calendar, The Ekphrastic Review, and The Wild Word. Two of his ekphrastic poems appear in Silent Waters, photographs by George Digalakis (Athens, 2017). He has two chapbooks, Standing Inside the Web (Bear House Publishing 1990), and Fire and Shadows (Legal Studies Forum 2008). His poems “Viewing the Dead,” and “Black Dogs,” were nominated for Pushcart Prizes. His poem “Night Winds” was nominated for “Best of the Net 2024.” ** Your Point At what point will you slant sideways into the horizon of your memory At what point will you disappear from the you and me that once was us At what point will you unhook the imagining of tomorrow lose all memory of my kiss Donna-Lee Smith Donna-Lee Smith dedicates these words to those caring for loved ones with Alzheimer's, especially her sister-in-law. ** Solitary Traveler The night he died he told her he would. No, you won’t, she said, though he knew what he knew and in fact did what he said. As we drove on Interstate 40 to the funeral, surrounded by mountains, we passed twisted Joshua trees, their branches like arms upraised in prayer. She looked down at her lap and told me her deepest regret would always be that she did not hold his hand as died. I just let him go alone, she wept. And I know I was supposed to say No, you did not. But she did. She did. Cheryl Snell Cheryl Snell’s books include several poetry collections and novels. Her most recent writing has or will appear in Midway, Rogue Agent, Blue Unicorn, 100 Word Story, and the Best Microfiction 2025 anthology. |
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