 Courtyard Tables, by Glenn Harrington (USA) contemporary. Click on 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 Courtyard Tables, by Glenn Harrington. Deadline is November 21, 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 HARRINGTON 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, NOVEMBER 21, 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 Vision of Faust, by Luis Ricardo Falero (Spain) 1878 Bare in Our Dark Bravery Nudely we frolic. The lake, it beckons. Especially at night, moonshine obscured by cloudcover. Some say skinny-dipping, but not all of us are as skinny as skeletal shorebirds, and that’s okay-- We are all bodies: all bosoms, butts, and bellies. Like black cats, all bodies demand (and deserve) pleasure. That wondrous crone at our hips; that lying lizard after our hearts. Who are we to deny. Nudely we frolic. The gray sky, it beckons. Bats swoop softer and the hornéd goats soar higher, higher, with us riders. Creatures as familiar as our own skins, which we bare in our dark bravery. Court Harler Court Harler is a queer writer, editor, and educator based in the American South. She holds an MA and an MFA. She's ownder of Harler Literary LLC, founding editor of Flash the Court, and former editor in chief of CRAFT Literary Magazine. Her multigenre, award-winning work has been published around the world. Learn more at harlerliterary.llc or flashthecourt.com, and find her on Instagram @CourtneyHarler. ** If By Chance in the Woods The day I fell for a werewolf I was forest-swimming, searching for twigs to spruce up my broomstick, letting my bare feet sink into damp soil under the fallen yellow orange leaves. He was on all fours playing at cracking open spiky chestnut cases for the nutty treasure inside. Much sexier than a truffle-hunting swine. I broke one of my wooden lengths accidently-on-purpose and he stiffened, dropped his treat, and twitched an ear in my direction. "Red? Is that you?" As he turned towards me, he was suddenly standing on two legs and had acquired trousers. "Red?" His brow furrowed, "Where's your...?" He drank me up and down with his onyx eyes. "I was caught in an unearthly gust," I said, "blew every thread right off..." I faked a shiver through my alabaster orbs. The wolfman gulped, and the goofy hairy gentleman in him opened his arms to me, "Good thing I'm mostly rug, apart from mouth and muscle." I melted into his fur, wondering: Who is this Red and how do I end her? Bayveen O'Connell Bayveen O'Connell loves writing short form fiction and non-fiction narratives. She's inspired by myth, folklore, history, art, and travel. Her pieces have appeared in print and in online publications. Bayveen's creative non-fiction collection, Out of the Woods, is being launched this October. ** Visiting My Ex-Wife’s Grave, Anger, and a Simple Syllogism It’s not the hastily executed, shallow type, so popular with serial killers, and crimes of passion. Scattered leaves and twigs barely covering the victim’s mutilated body. In fact, she’s alive. So am I. We will not be going together. Adam coined the “f-word” just after The Expulsion. There was plenty of anger on both sides of the gates. Buddha sat around for a lifetime trying to get a handle on his. Or was that suffering? My case is a simple syllogism. I did not control my anger. Not her fault. So much for my marriage. Matthew Sisson Matthew Sisson’s poetry has appeared in journals ranging from the Harvard Review Online, to JAMA The Journal of the American Medical Association. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and read his work on NPR’s On Point. His book, Please, Call Me Moby, was published by The Pecan Grove Press, of St. Mary’s University, San Antonio, Texas. ** To Ricardo Falero Regarding Faust You reek of Satan by this ruse of ocean sky you wryly use where Aires reigns as sign of fire extolling courage of desire in witches who before your brush have modeled, as if joyful rush, their varied shapes as school of fish whose way to sabbath grants your wish by baring flesh of female form unveiled as if bedeviled swarm unwittingly becoming feast for savage soul of inner beast perhaps as artist now charade exquisite as your Faustian trade. 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. ** Pursued by the Unbearable Brooms bats boobs saurian demons goats a crone a black cat the road to hell is paved with cliches envisioned by a mid-century advertising artist except: a skeletal pelican interjects a note of the absurd Is it Faust whose beak can hold more than his belly can? The alluring succubi of his dreams—close behind the crone the voluptuous witch with fiery eyes that duck-billed hellion suggesting the shape of Faust's own tenure in hell Is it Egyptian Henet protective psychopomp stripped of its feathered powers here attendant of damnation, bodiless is bloodless not nurture but torture stripped of suggestion of the Christ’s blood sacrifice promised redemption exeunt stage left pursued by the unbearable Mark Folse Mark Folse is a poet. retired journalist and blogger and IT factotum and native of New Orleans. His poems appeared in the Peauxdunque Review, New Laurel Review, Ellipsis, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, The New Delta Review, Metazen, Ellipsis, Unlikely Stories and The Maple Leaf Rag. He was a member of the post-Katrina/Federal Flood NOLA Bloggers writing and activist group, and his work from that period was anthologized in What We Know: New Orleans as Home, Please Forward, The Louisiana Anthology and A Howling in the Wires. ** Untitled glowing naked, she brings out the animal in me Charles Rossiter Charles Rossiter, NEA Poems in Fellowship recipient, and frequent Pushcart nominee, has published poems in The Ekphrastic Review, Bennington Review, Paterson Review among others. Info on recent books with sample poems at : https://www.foothillspublishing.com/2019/rossiter.html ** Eternal Fights for Eternity Eternal fights Between youth And old age Running to their Sabbath Witches Aging witches Thieves of life Jealous of young and soft skin They fight against death Their naked skin molts And changes into old skin. It molts so much That they refuse To recognize it as their own On their mutating body They chase their younger sisters Refusing their own destiny In quest of an illusional Eternity Jean Bourque Jean lives in Montreal. He enjoys learning English as a second language through writing. ** The Descent of Faust Faust -you have been condemned to hell by your actions. Your vile family of pain , perversity and hate have deformed and dehumanized your soul. I abhor your demented visions that are inescapable. You turn love and art into cruelty and lust beyond description. Demons ravage a world where love once lived. Loathing that allow devils to rule the earth. Bodies without souls defile a world once blessed by God. Where is your humanity - buried -not to be exhumed. what has happened to your soul. Evil creatures defile a sky where birds once flew. You rejected goodness and left the world to rot. And yet you are not past forgiveness. Comfort , love and forgiveness await your return. Prayer and redemption are still possible. The savior will accept you into his heart. Do not defile the world further. Repent--repent; live a clean and holy life once more. Bend a knee and ask for love and forgiveness. The wings you were given can fly you to heaven. Sandy Rochelle Sandy Rochelle is a widely published poet, actress and voice over artist. Publications include, Synchronized Chaos, One Art, Dissident Voice, Verse Virtual, Amethyst Review, Wild Word, Cultural Daily, Haiku Universe, Connecticut River Review, and others. ** The Master At sixteen I learned the petty jealousy of spiteful older women how a male weight presses on a sainted frame what blood tastes like when the tongue is restrained how fire in my eyes burns the waste around me to be a woman is to be beautiful-- so to be ugly as a woman is to not belong. I can be an ugly fiend I can be a goddess and a man would only love me in my divine but let not the wild thing in me be tamed bashfulness be damned, I wear my shirt like a cape fly wildly into the clouds’ escape “Margarita!” I shout my hands reach out, they seize, they twist misery made me; I am witch. Stephanie Houser Stephanie Houser is a recent philosophy and English literature graduate from Columbus, Ohio. She writes toward the edges of knowing—where philosophy meets feeling, and beauty collapses into its opposite. Her writing explores queer womanhood, divinity, and the strange tenderness of being seen. She currently works as a writer for a local, community-building nonprofit. ** Mephistopheles on Walpurgisnacht There! On the Brocken peak, where the shadows dance. There, Faustus, witch and warlock will gather. Let me take your cloak. We will ride on it like Arabians of old. Fly, fly to the mountain! Weave between long-tailed demons, labyrinth of bewitched broomsticks, serrated hems of lizard tails and bat wings. Revel, revel in the orgy of fleshy curves, grunted snarls, slapping, slithering tongues. What a party! Ride, ride past the great horned goat, tip your hat to the sacrifice. My mouth waters already. Who cares about your Gretchen now, eh, Faustus? When there’s such bounty to be had. Barbara Krasner Barbara Krasner majored in German language and literature. Through ekphrasis, she is reclaiming her intimacy with Goethe's Faust and his deal with Mephistopheles. She once saw a restaging of Gounod''s Faust at the Metropolitan Opera with Jonas Kaufmann in the lead role. She gasped throughout the entire production. She is the author of the ekphrastic Poems of the Winter Palace (Bottlecap Press, 2025), The Night Watch (Kelsay Books, 2025) and the forthcoming The Wanderers (Shanti Arts, 2026). Visit her website at www.barbarakrasner.com. ** Visions of Faust The Devil's in the details Beautiful promises front and center Eyes drawn to what's desired most Unable to see the full picture Beautiful promises front and centre A life of pure pleasures Unable to see the full picture Focused only on what could be A life of pure pleasures One could only dream Focused only on what could be He's forgotten the most important thing One could only dream Eyes drawn to what's desired most He's forgotten the most important thing The Devil's in the detail Andrew Jones Andrew Jones is 37 years old and just recently started writing again after about 22 years. His focus is on Gembun and Pantoum poetry. ** The Bruise Translucent green clouds my vision And there she is again, poetry, my nemesis, my some-timey friend The streets were empty where she ran, I couldn’t populate her City of lights, So many stars that I couldn’t comprehend what tiny flicker I Could possibly lend She flees, swirling her numerous pastel petticoats, Hiding the brighter colours closer to the limbs, bruised with over-use of tired tropes I tried to put aside to mixed reviews- Her hair, so unruly, brushed, then mussed by the great men Leaving the scintillating women to comb through it again and again- Red-gold like fall, forest deep was her dress, Gone again, but I saw her, and that’s something, I guess. Debbie Walker-Lass Debbie Walker-Lass, (she/her) is a poet, collage artist, and writer living in Decatur, Georgia. Her work has appeared in Collaborature, The Rockvale Review,Green Ink Poetry, The Ekphrastic Journal, Punk Monk, Poetry Quarterly, The Light Ekphrastic and The Niagara Poetry Journal, among others. Debbie was proud to be nominated by TER for the Best Small Fictions, 2024 anthology. Debbie is an avid Tybee Island beachcomber and lover of all things nature. She also enjoys collaborating with Jahzara Wood, together they write poetry as “The 1965.” ** Victorian Bacchanal As bare as a bubble, I slither and float, Set free from my corset, astraddle a goat, With nothing between us, as nude as you will – Yet somehow my bustle is haunting me still. The Doctor, beside me, is stripped, but unsheared : He bristles, as always, with whiskers and beard, And though he’s not now in his frock coat, it’s plain That once tonight’s over he will be again. Hell’s ghouls swirl around us, a riotous gang: I’ve pulled out my braids, let my ringlets go hang: I’m naked as Lilith! But come on, attest: You cannot but see how I look when I’m dressed. Julia Griffin Julia Griffin has published in several poetry magazines.. ** Faustian Dream Faust, with the demonic presence of Mephistopheles Despite degrees, and as a scholar, rejected the divine As a sign of his embracing anything with satanic theme Began a dream, of naked witches - a sabbath to attend And spend every moment reaching sexual ascendance Their attendance ever combining both duty and desire On fire, with bodies and libidos seemingly unsatisfied Never to hide their exuberance as some sort of lapse Perhaps heeding the call to celebrate Walpurgisnacht Marked as followers, flames of passion never doused Aroused, writhing and cavorting, all in erotic displays Crazed with stimulation and excitement all the while Nubile and attractive young women feeding his dream A scheme to consolidate a dark commitment forever As a clever ruse by the Devil’s attending representative And give superficial recompense for a crossroads deal But unreal portrayals of witches as haggard and aging Raging and always with evil intentions, is just a cover As another way to obscure strong physical temptation Elation for Faust, albeit in an imagined delightful scene Keen to participate, and revel in that orgiastic journey Howard Osborne Howard is a UK citizen, retired. Published author of non-fiction reference book, scientific papers and poetry. Interests mainly creative writing (poetry, novel, short stories, songs and scripts), music and travel. ** Revisioned Listen to the way the whirling wind rattles all that we thought would last. We float—untethered, swirled, ringed by spirals of bodies barely limbed echoed inside a decaying past. Listen how they seize the wind and scatter bloodlust end to end-- nightmares bordered with shadows cast into swirling air--floating, ringed by demons that turn and return again, looking for harvests of heresy amassed, falling wayward into the wind. It’s not the devil that rescinds the light, but the darkness of humanity’s vast untethered hubris swirling us, ringed by greed and power, unoriginal sin that refuses the questions spirit asks. Listen to the way sycophants bend the wind, snare us, suffocate us--floating, swirled, beringed 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/. ** Somewhere Between Death and Reincarnation In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The sky is scraped to the translucent gray of a wasp's wing and the angel in her marble length of tresses and gown trailing a leaf-strewn earth plucks the string of a violin. Its note awakens grief in branch, berries and vine, in moss that sables the stone wall and rust the iron gate. Grief that calls the wind to rise and round up what remains of my ashes scattered on the graveyard lawn Soon they lift and fly into the ocean's air sparked with a spitting chill while a man looks on wearing a lanyard of dark hair braided and anointed with lavender oil sprinkled lightly in. Two keys dangle at its end, one to the house, the other my cedar box. A small casket where he found a bottle with a rose bud inside, some pills left on the felt lining and a farewell note telling why and what must be done on vellum pale as the November sun, reading: Plant the flower and a bush will bloom in the heart of spring when I come back as a woman wrought of stronger faith and will -- a different self with a memorized soul. (A bargain I made long ago.) So strew the salted wave with the opiates and they will wash ashore as sea glass in the sand showing the bluish green of your daughter's eyes five years from now, born under the full moon's rise. And tear the paper with a tender hand, letting it fall as pieces of bread so the birds may eat the bitter sweet sorrow of my death and carry it deep within their song, Wendy Howe Wendy Howe is an English teacher and free lance writer who lives in Southern California. Her work is deeply influenced by diverse cultures, history, myth and women's issues. Over the years, she has appeared in a number of journals including: Liminality, Silver Blade, Eye To The Telescope, Strange Horizons, The Winged Moon, Carmina Magazine, Crows and Cross keys, Eternal Haunted Summer and Sage Woman. Her most recent work has appeared in Songs Of Eretz and The Otherworld Poetry Journal. ** Five Things I’ve Learned About Witches 1. You can try to invite just one witch, maybe Hildy, over for a cozy game night. But be prepared for Hildy to start a massive group text sharing your address. Soon your driveway will be cluttered with brooms and your intimate game night will be transformed into a tournament. 2. Witches won’t arrive empty-handed. But don’t count on receiving any hostess gifts. Instead of chardonnay, they’ll bring their familiars. Of course you like cats, who doesn’t? But Friskers is always bristling. And some familiars aren’t even feline. Learn to like bats. If Ravenna shows up, get ready for her skeletal pelican-thing to swoop down and swipe random game pieces. 3. If you’re planning to play poker or some other card game with witches, give that dream up right now. Witches love Scrabble, and if you have Scrabble tucked away in your game cabinet, it’s coming out. If you don’t own Scrabble, witches will conjure up a game board and letters just for the occasion. 4. Witches don’t recognize the authority of Merriam-Webster. If you’ve just added S-T-I-C-K to the end of BROOM and think you’re going to clean up with a triple word score, forget it. Agatha will claim “broomstick” is two separate words and Hildy will insist it’s hyphenated and no dictionary on Earth will dissuade them. 5. If you stick to your guns, demanding the witches play fair, prepare for a ritual flaying. You can pursue them and their familiars, catch hold of the tail of their leering iguana, but you’re not getting your skin back until you surrender. Tracy Royce Tracy Royce is a writer and poet whose words appear in Bending Genres, Five Minutes, MacQueen’s Quinterly, ONE ART, and elsewhere. She lives in Southern California, where she enjoys hiking, playing board games, and obsessing over Richard Widmark movies. You won't see her whizzing about on a broom, but you can find her on Bluesky. ** The Method of the Chaos There is method in the chaos philosophers insist to check if you will persist in catching the gist which is nowhere to be seen because it is mean, it is mean – it leaps on goats’ backs it grabs their horns and speeds in the universal wilderness of rising hairs and nude beauty on beauty shoulders while the goat of sex runs berserk as his growling sound cuts the space where Eros was supposed to enchant the chaos and trick the bodies in accord with his irresistible sward but to no avail – there hangs a mystery spell they are entranced by Lucifer in their most vulnerable readily available in Faust’s realm who knows no calm in meeting his damn brutal deal with the devil while his bargaining tool – the Soul – was sold for a grain of salt – and all of this done by a scientist who knew the gist yet went to insist heaven on earth as philosophical rebirth – the thinker’s final abode but is it the gist’s spot - the catharsis against the nemesis that is not in the realness the beauty of their bodies against the chaos of their hairs the trance of our otherworldliness – is this the method in the chaos, paid dearly by Faust – the tragic twist in its own mist – the infinite pursuit of stars through thorns - the dearest beauty to uphold – Faust’s last breath drops on the spikes of the method yet saved in the penitence’ bond of his beloved from beyond,,, Ekaterina Dukas Ekaterina Dukas writes poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning and her poems have often been honoured by TER and its challenges. Her poetry collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europe Edizioni. ** Saudade A flying assemblage of empty wombs, aborted dreams in coffins. Cold hollowed moon above half green autumn leaves, giant arms around thorny trees. Long silences then scream- embraces that can never be. How she must have walked in darkness to catch a glimpse of a forming mind, to hear the heartbeat. How she must have watched a wanting resurrection of failed desire. In autumn a season of separations, in October a festive month- of longing, of remembrance. Abha Das Sarma Abha Das Sarma lives in Bangalore, India. An engineer and management consultant by profession, writing is what makes her happy and fulfilled. Her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Spillwords, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Sparks of Calliope, Trouvaille Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Blue Heron Review and Poetry X Hunger among others.
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 Impulse, and Intuition, by Camellia Morris. Deadline is November 7, 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 MORRIS 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, NOVEMBER 7, 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.  Suitcase, by Nellie Two Bear Gates (USA/Lakota People) 1890-1910.. Photograph by Minneapolis Institute of Art employee., CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. ted to the us- jo- tr- ur- En- ney I stitched this suitcase as your gift on this distinctive day, a picture of preparedness, detailed, pored over, heft of my hug, each bead prayer-sewn. This suitcase itches for adventure. A tacit traveller, yet I hope as you open it, music will emanate: cheers and chinks of cups overflowing with teepee bounty, hearty feasts round spit-roast campfires, percussive hooves, rattling saddles and pipe bags crescendoing down uncharted trails, but mostly the sonorous bassline of family voices enveloping you like a buffalo poncho. I bless you, sweet foal, to travel unburdened, ready to move, yet knowing deep inside the name embroidered on your skin. May you live with open hands, a willing carrier of two cloaks, ready to pass them on. May your pine lodge-poles stand firm under blue skies and especially when dark clouds gather. May you craft a legacy of wise deeds that adorn you like a jewelled breastplate and may this suitcase go down the line with lassoed whoops of joy. Helen Freeman
Helen Freeman started writing whilst recovering from a car crash in Oman and got hooked. After several courses with The Poetry School she now has publications on several online sites like Ink, Sweat & Tears, Clear Poetry, Ground Poetry, Open Mouse, Algebra of Owls, Red River Review, Barren Magazine, The Drabble, Sukoon, Poems for Ephesians and of course The Ekphrastic Review. She loves trying her hand at some challenges presented here and reading the different interpretations chosen by editors. She currently lives in Edinburgh and her instagram is @chemchemi.hf ** The Trail of the Great Tear She stares at the valley. The rock on which she is seated has curled itself tight and hardened from grief. The sunset, like a golden, hot cheek, is pressed against the girl's cheek. A few strands of hair from her braided locks wander restlessly in the air. She is thinking of her grandfather’s death. And an eagle in the sky plucks its feathers from its own body. She must go. She must go. The Mississippi River: A great tear that has left a trail on the earth. Marjan Khoshbazan Marjan Khoshbazan is a writer and poet based in Tehran, Iran, with an academic background in Dramatic Literature. Her work is centered on ekphrasis, driven by the belief that language can render the "costliest images" without the need for colour or form—like a halo of fog in the air of imagination. Having grown up amidst a pervasive environment of censorship and trauma, she views her writing as an essential pursuit of freedom, recognizing that "a bird in a cage values flight more than one in the sky." Her poems are therefore raw, honest, and lack the capacity to withstand censorship. This is her first submission to The Ekphrastic Review, and she extends a hand toward your artistic community. ** Singing of Places Never Mine Homesick hardly, no address I miss when doors bolt. Too ardent absorbing knee-deep newsletters, sun-circling Canyons, the blue TVs. I used to own a home, live out of a bag now. I largely buy singles, fill tanks midway, in case I need-leave in three days. Florence, Oregon here. Small towns seem struck on coyotes and bears. I deal in 50-mile views. Fireside night, an easy draw-in that organics onto a borrowed bench nextdoors. Politics hushed, their marriage ideas, past my truth. The teacher one brave-changes: I like your name means warrior. I never fight oceans over trees. He finds a map from his truck, and states open up, eating echos off their reliving, and I, live along, my know-how holds plenty cupboards to love an atlas-travel. Both measure me their Dakota past, Badland leaves bare, and there, I step into my former fate, fueling no sleep for years. I’d love fair love again, non-patterned parlance, Pasques blooming. Next day, I border-cross the 101, a gold-poppy-welcome. Lying about apples in the boot, I never still-stand, till luck turns off. Terraced porches, moonslick guestbooks. The texts I never send. Kate Copeland Kate Copeland’s love for languages led her to linguistics & teaching; her love for art & water to poetry. She is curator-editor for The Ekphrastic Review & runs linguistic-poetry workshops for the International Women's Writing Guild. Find her poems @ TER, WildfireWords, Gleam, Metphrastics, Hedgehog Press [a.o.], or @ https://www.instagram.com/kate.copeland.poems/. Kate was born in harbour-city, and adores housesitting in the world. ** The Legacy Bag We stare at this cloth heirloom featuring figures and symbols. Its story stitched by Lakota hands that have felt ancestral fingers apply needle and thread Now I open the embroidered bag and emptiness becomes an echo -- subtle, like the falling dusk. A chorus we suddenly hear as words spill out. The wisdom of women from our mother's house binding their breath with ours as they hum and whisper: Slow burn the forest to bless mule deer and trees. The sea surrounds them with cold water. Stand on the tortoise. Your hair the wind's soft shadow as he tells of beginnings when his shell formed the first mound of earth -- later spreading into islands then continents. The land became settled and your earliest life, your original soul was spawned here -- as White Bead Woman who wept for her people and the wild creatures among them -- breaking a dry spell with rain or dew. Her tears left trembling on the spider's web to count and reflect the green blessings of field and wood. Wendy Howe Wendy Howe is an English teacher who lives in California. Her poetry reflects her interest in myth, women in conflict and history. She has been published in the following journals: The Poetry Salzburg Review, The Interpreter's House, Corvid Queen, Strange Horizons, The Otherworld Poetry Journal, The Acropolis Journal and many others ** Contain Her I wanted a Hermes bag, but instead he brought me a photo of an embroidered museum repro bag made by the Lakota Indians. Like a kid’s bag except for the silver handle and top locks on either side. Blue whimsy of a purse. A white teepee and pots with no stew and woven rugs drying on a line and a horse with a fancy saddle. Hermes flew away and I longed to be inside the embroidered story, an Indian myself liked I’d pretended after seeing Dustin Hoffman in Little Big Man at the Prytania Theater when I was fifteen. How I’d wanted to be kidnapped and taken away from my mother and grandmother who never paid attention to anything but books and dogs. I will myself into the tapestry. Pop into the opened silver buckle, seal myself inside and wait for the woman who owned a Hermes bag to fall in love with this bag, this museum bag, and buy it at auction unknowing she’d bought a kid longing to be re-mothered inside. Lucinda Kempe Lucinda Kempe’s work is forthcoming in Salvage (China Miéville editor), the Summerset Review, SoFloPoJo, Unbroken Journal, Bull, Does It Have Pockets, Gooseberry Pie, New Flash Fiction Review, and Centaur, among places. An excerpt of her memoir was short listed for the Fish Memoir Prize in April 2021. She lives on Long Island where she exorcises with words. You can find her here: https://lucindakempe.substack.com ** Lakota Heritage, 1892 As a young Indian-- as early white settlers called us— my people lived in the Dakota territory where tribal members with lancers and bows and arrows hunted plains buffalo for hides, clothing, and food sustenance. At six I was sent to an Indian boarding school in Missouri where for eleven years, the staff attempted to eradicate knowledge of my culture. Three years after my forced departure from my home encampment at Whitestone Hill, U.S. forces burned the settlement down, destroying living shelters, and the winter food supply. Today, in honor of my father, Chieftain 2-Bear Gates, I indulge in beadwork to preserve our history creating quilt-like portraits of ceremonial weddings and reservation life. Sincerely, Mahpiya Bogawin Jim Brosnan A Pushcart nominee, Dr. Jim Brosnan is the author of Long Distance Driving (2024) and Nameless Roads (2019), copies available at [email protected]. His poems have appeared in the Aurorean (US), Crossways Literary Magazine (Ireland), Eunoia Review(Singapore), Nine Muses (Wales), Scarlet Leaf Review (Canada), Strand (India), The Madrigal (Ireland), The Wild Word (Germany), and Voices of the Poppies (United Kingdom). He holds the rank of full professor at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI. ** Portmanteau Here's travelogue, a people bagged, unusual canvas, tribal ware, a picture postcard, labelled space, the moving scenery declared, applique, vitals, still, allowed. In craft of double artistry, but without guile, for story told, identity, as case reveals plain creatures with their implements, portmanteau of lived history. So instruments of harvests sewn the common threads, communal life, a people moved, evacuees, who set up camp where permit shows, for carpetbaggers made their choice. From Laramie, Dakota wars, abuse was General policy; so proud sub Sioux of the Black Hills whose ancient culture near destroyed, reduced to places now reserved. 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 ** The One Thing I Cannot Accept I must tell you And you must know What I felt The day you returned When everything changed For three nights I wrestled alone Sleepless through the night Preparing For the grief I feared Would at last come for me Carried by the wind With a story Letting me know That you Would not return For three days I worked quietly Each day preparing Your favorite foods To share In celebration Of our reuniting You With me By the fire With all we have created When I saw you Enter the camp My spirit soared The joy The relief The renewal of hope That disappeared So suddenly So completely Even before I asked "And where is my son?" You were silent For but a moment The moment Of the deepest terror I ever felt You embraced me As I showered you In tears But I could not Be comforted And you know Even today I cannot be soothed Even as I see you try As you lovingly Try to do all you can For me Through your own Dark sadness I see you And your effort While I fervently Sew bead to bead to bead Creating a home for my pain To lock it somehow back into that moment The instant where the spears Punctured my soul When I knew Long before I understood That my son Would never become A young man Who would stand with us And continue to sing his favourite songs For us all When I finish my beading Then I will speak Of that which I cannot accept And then Only then I will seek To live again In the world not as it was But as it has become And it is now With you With my most beautiful daughters And with him Filling my memory Burning always Bright embers In the hearth Of my heart Michael Willis Michael Willis lives in Washington, DC, where he works as an attorney for American Indian tribal governments and indigenous peoples' organizations. Michael's passion for writing emerged in early adulthood while traveling in the Andes and in Mexico and Central America. A life-long lover of poetry and a practicing musician, Michael joined a writing and songwriting weekend workshop at Sourwood Forest in the mountains of Amherst, Virginia in 2025. From there Michael took new satisfaction in sharing writing and works in progress in community. ** Sun’ka Wakan (The Horse) I wanted to travel to the big city with you to see that musical about Cuba’s people and music: a musical about music, like the Music Man, who himself was traveling to other -- albeit tinier and midwestern -- towns. I wanted to fold my best beaded clothes neatly into yours and carry but one bag between us, consol- idating our baggage into not his and hers but ours, the story of what was becoming home between us. I wanted that comfort in a strange land that comes from nestling into the hands of one’s true beloved. But we had not yet lain down by the river that runs between us, we had not yet slept in each other’s trembling and alert arms. Instead, I handed you the reins that would steer you between autonomy and connection, independence and interdependence. I said “Have fun, Hon.” But even the horse didn’t want you to go. Greta Ehrig Greta Ehrig earned an MFA in Creative Writing from American University, where she edited Folio literary journal and was a Lannan Fellow. Her poetry and translations have been published in numerous journals and anthologies. Her short plays have received staged readings at College Park Arts Exchange and Theater J in DC. Her songwriting has been recognized by the Bernard-Ebb and Mid-Atlantic Song Contests. She has performed on stages from the Baltimore Book Festival to the Boulder Museum of Art. She is a certified Amherst Writers & Artists (AWA) Affiliate and teaches piano, songwriting, and other creative writing online and in person. ** To Nellie Two Bear Gates Regarding Suitcase Your gift that marks a journey's dawn to which a heart and soul are drawn reminds the bride that with her goes the blood of many whose repose became estate of stubborn will surviving as the courage still to carry with her precious lore conveyed to yonder as its yore by craft of patient, gentle hand to venerate and understand the bond possessed forevermore that is the Spirit, is the core, of Love transcending nature's earth a bride is blessed to give rebirth. Portly Bard Portly Bard: Prefers to craft with sole intent... of verse becoming complement... ...and by such homage being lent... ideally also compliment. Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise for words but from returning gaze far more aware of fortune art becomes to eyes that fathom heart. ** The Gift With each bead my gnarled and rough fingers nudge onto my needle, I think not of the suitcase itself, but your journey as a bride. My journey, too. With each stitch, with each piercing of the fabric, I give you myself, our ancestors, our sisters and brothers. Should any bead hold the grooves of my fingerprint, that is my gift, too. With each bead, I give you protective images of our lives: our connected hearts from pipe bags, community-hugging warmth from buffalo blankets and robes, cleansing smoke from our smoldering kettles, and resilient movements from horses—those Beautiful Pure Innocents—all looking forward toward blue-sky happiness, reminding us of our fortitude in challenging times. With each bead, I give you our past, present, and prophecy. Grasp the handles. Ride on eagle wings as you and your groom soar to the Great Spirit to bless your marriage. Barbara Krasner Barbara Krasner, MFA, is the author of four books of ekphrastic poetry, including Poems of the Winter Palace (Bottlecap Press, 2025) and The Night Watch (Kelsay Books, forthcoming in 2025). Her work has appeared in more than seventy literary journals. She teaches Native American Genocides at the graduate level and lives in New Jersey. Visit her website at www.barbarkrasner.com. ** Unpacking the Trauma My troubles are too many to pack in this bag. Collected for me since before I was born and passed on as heirlooms from father to son. What am I to do with all this sorrow, now that I have a son of my own? Must the burden of generations weigh heavy on him too? Or can I find a way to loosen the knots, untangle the threads and present my inheritance as a gift to my beautiful boy, that his footsteps might be lighter, his mind freer? This is my hope. My dream. My prayer. Berni Rushton Berni lives in Australia, on Sydney’s beautiful Northern Beaches. She works in the health sector and in her free time enjoys writing poetry, prose and short fiction. She has been published in The Ekphrastic Review, shortlisted for flash fiction and her first novel is in progress. Follow Berni on Instagram, @berni_rushton ** Near Standing Rock Nellie Two Bear Gates, the "Gathering of Storm Clouds Woman", was a beadwork artist in a culture with no word for art, but in all their days walked in beauty's way. This valise, a virtuoso artifact, was meant to be a wedding gift with pictographic scenes that helped record the rites that needed this remembering. Gifts of horses from four corners of the Plains have joined suspended kettles brimming full of food, and a lengthy line of beaded pipebags and embellished hides of the sacred buffalo, beside the tribal tipi, a center of the universe. This was disappearing on the long-knives Reservations and in the distant Boarding School that carried little Nellie off. Did this valise, when opened, contain the good Red Road of life or the Black Road, banked by the heaps of rotting buffalo? And was this decorated luggage, companion for so many travels, large enough to carry broken dreams? Royal Rhodes Royal Rhodes is a poet and retired professor of global religions. He has been attracted to the story and writings of Nicholas Black Elk, the Lakota visionary and medicine man. Black Elk's description of the seven sacred rites of the Oglala Lakota remains an important description of his spiritual journey and that of his people. ** I Hear Two Beading Artists Talk to Each Other Nellie Two Bear Gates’ suitcase, decorated with scenes of family and culture was made for a niece’s journey into marriage. As soon as I saw this beaded artwork, I had a vision of Nellie next to my mother, both of them seated comfortably in armchairs, stitching glass beads onto cases—the suitcase was Nellie’s choice and my mother’s was a miniature train case/purse. In my vision they laughed and talked together as each pushed strong steel, curved needles through the material that acted as the canvas for their creations. I watched my mother make her blue case. I brought her a Band-Aid when she picked her finger on the needle, watched with amazement when she had to string those tiny, tiny beads and now saw them both working. Each needle pulled along a string of glass beads--just enough for the line of colour to be laid in a particular space, tying off as needed, restringing often, layering color onto colour to make the designs very often for Nellie’s detailed message, relating bits of culture to her niece, revealing their culture’s basics to her so that the case would remind her of who she was and where she came from so that she would know how to proceed wherever she journeyed. In my vision, I heard Nellie Two Bears Gates speaking to my mother, asking about her work. “Why do you work only in shades of blue, like shadows on your small case?” My mother laughed and replied, “You create to reveal a path for your niece’s long journey, a path based on remembering your culture. My blue ombre, is a work of shadows to remind me to keep my heart, my deep thoughts secret. This purse will go to my daughter eventually, to teach her to do the same. Always.” When the vision ended I was filled with a new appreciation for stories told in beads. Both artists told stories for a future generation with their designs, detailed work stitching that occupied many late nights often in low light, each piece made with hundreds of tiny glass beads and a story to tell…or keep in shadows. Mom crafted hers in the 1950s, well after the time of Nellie but such workmanship, for telling or for stating there were things to say but would not be told, such tasks make connections that have no barriers in time or space. Cherished. Joan Leotta Author's note: I have the blue purse my mother made in my vision, shaped like a miniature train case. It coordinated with the navy velvet suit she wore when she shed the role of early 1950s Mom and wife, and secretary/bookkeeper in my Grandfather’s business, for the glamour of nightclubbing on a “date” with my Dad. Joan Leotta of Fairfax, VA is a writer and a story performer. Her award winning writing work (poetry, essays, short fiction, and novls) is often inspird by art as are her performances. She gives a one woman show as Louisa May Alcott and performs folktales featuring food, family, and strong women. Throwing Away the World The whole world, all of us, are inside the bag, though you’d never guess from the way the traveler manhandles it. He swings the carry-on through the airport like a kid with a broken toy. He forgets it at the bar after downing two whiskeys, neat. A porter rushes over to the gate with the bag just as the traveler’s flight begins to board. In the air, we panic. How did we let this happen? we whisper to each other. The word ignorance is spoken loud enough to be heard in the cabin, and apathy is louder, and riot is louder still, until a well-placed kick of the traveler’s calfskin shoe ends all discussion. “I love your bag,” a flight attendant says to the traveler, crouching to take in the thousands of beads stitched to its surface, the magnificently beaded people frolicking across its cornflower blue background. “I’m a crafter myself, though I’ve never tried something that elaborate. It must have taken ages to make.” “I’m bored of it,” the traveler says, in a lazy, drawn-out slur. He trains another kick at the belly of the bag. We leap from the sides, our cries like that of baby animals being punted from cliffs. “When do we get to the volcano?” Volcano. We tremble. The bag shakes. The flight attendant checks her watch. “Forty minutes. Can I bring you anything?” “Champagne.” When she returns with a glass, the traveler takes a prudish sip, then twists his mouth into a pucker.“Warm. Take it back.” A drunk returning a drink. A rich man bored by richness. What a world, the flight attendant thinks. When she next passes through the cabin, she finds that the traveler has fallen asleep. His big head is flopped onto his shoulder, his domed forehead wide and barren. A viscous waterfall of drool dribbles from his lower lip to the tip of his tie, where the liquid fans through the silk. The plane descends towards the volcano. We can almost taste the sulfuric smoke rising from the lava fields. We can almost smell the bitter smolder of the bead people melting seconds before we do. We did this to ourselves, one of us says. Another repeats the words, and within a minute we are all saying it, in every language, the words in every pitch, every note, from every throat, out of every body. The flight attendant can’t pick out the individual words in even the languages she knows; the messy chorus of billions through the beaded fabric of that one-of-a-kind bag is as incoherent as the screeching of birds escaping a forest fire. She kneels beside us. Her stockings rasp against the carpeted aisle. She cups her hand around her ear and leans in. From our guilt, our shame, our fear, she hears one word: help. With a glance at the still-sleeping traveler, the flight attendant carefully shifts the bag through the metal legs of the chair. She avoids brushing the square-tipped toe of the traveler’s wingtip, but only just. She has us now. Her breath fogs the bronze clasp of the bag. She sees that, up close, it isn’t perfect. There are problems with proportion. There are a few who are enormous, while the rest are tiny and powerless. There are beads missing, threads loose. There is a lack of communication between the sides. Despite all that, she thinks it has potential. She brushes a fingertip against the whole world, then stows us in the overhead compartment right behind her sewing kit. The doors have opened and the other passengers have disembarked by the time the traveler rouses himself with a phlegmy snore. He squeezes his eyes shut, then forces them open. “Where’s my bag?” he barks. The flight attendant smiles. “Already at the gate,” she says, lying to the man who wanted to throw away the world. Joanna Theiss Joanna Theiss (she/her) is a former lawyer living in Washington, DC. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in The Penn Review, Chautauqua, Peatsmoke Journal, Milk Candy Review, and Best Microfiction, among others. You can find links to her published works and her mosaic collages at www.joannatheiss.com. Bluesky: bsky.app/joannatheiss.com ** A Letter to My Husband on the Occasion of My Death My dearest Frank, I will be with you soon. My old suitcase is packed. You will remember it when you see it. It is small and on the outside tells of our happy time. A time of love and betrothing. Inside I have laid what I will need for my visit and some gifts for you. Since you left I have continued my work. The Black Hills and their sacred spirits live with us but still remain beyond our protection. I hear from them often and pass their messages to the occupiers through our council yet they refuse to listen or to hear. They only talk of gold. Gold! As you well know, gold is the least valuable of the treasures of those hills. In preparation for my visit, I wrapped in tissue all I have learned during my time as earthly form. I selected only the most delicate wisdom to take with me now I am departing this life. I have carefully arranged the layers of truths like precious butterfly wings, to keep them safe for this, my last journey. I hate to leave my work unfinished but I am ready. I have lived by my true name in these troublesome times and never shirked from facing the storm clouds and pushing on through the rain in search of more peaceful lives beyond for my people. My time here will come again but for now I am needed with you and the ancestors. I will bring with me the wisdom from those who nurtured me and from those who came before me and those who came before them. I got it from the birds in the sky, from the buffalo on the plains, from the lichen on the rock. From the flowers that poke their heads above the scrub once the winter ice and early spring chill has given way to the sun again. I learned from the leaves, from the soil, from the ashes of the cooking fires. I absorbed it from the bones and the hides of the horses, from the snorts of their breath in the autumn mist as they galloped free across the expanse of our shared lands. I caught the wisdom of the ancients in the grains of sand stirred up by the winds; and the rivers that ran through me and over me blessed me with their whispered secrets. The essence of this I will bring back to you in my suitcase. I have tried to leave much behind, hoping it will catch in the winds or fall in the rain, touching those I leave, as I was once touched by it. I hope it will find Frank Junior and Mary Ann and give them strength to carry them through. That it will help Mollie and little Josie cleave to each other with love and serenity and that Catherine, John and sickly Annie will hold their memories with them in their suitcases of love, as I have held mine. I have asked the spirits to keep the remembrance of our children’s younger years on the wings of the sand martin and the chickadee that we may all meet with love again on the prairie. I shall leave imminently. Until I arrive with you, keep our memories close so we might share them in love and laughter with each other and with our ancestors. When you see the light shining with me, lighting the path ahead as I approach, please, my love, arrange for the gates to be opened for me to ease my passage. Your loving and dedicated wife, Nellie Two Bears Caroline Mohan Caroline Mohan is based in Ireland and writes sporadically - mostly stories with the occasional poem and mostly in workshops. She is currently enjoying ekphrastic writing. ** Bead by Bead I Encased as designed, bead by bead Taken from the roots of tradition Imagined in the mind of father provider And crafted by mother creator Wrapped in protective shelter To carry life as change II As our ancestors adapted to change And told their stories, bead by bead Moved across this land in unbound shelter Took the wisdom of tradition Trusted long faith in creator What was before, became provider III Now this gift is provider Containing outside change Sustaining blessings by creator Building new life, bead by bead From our shared tradition A protection, a shelter IV So, as life collects in shelter Pay offerings to provider As we have throughout tradition Welcome all change Thread each day, bead by bead Until uniting with creator V Then becoming creator No matter where the shelter Even if unraveling, bead by bead Stay one with provider Learn from change And transport as ancient tradition VI Convey forward to new tradition Visions from inside creator Where two combine in change Discover shelter Become provider To each new life, bead by bead VII Though we arrive from tradition as our shelter And transform from creator to provider Pass on change to next life, bead by bead 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. ** Coming of Age Twelve horses surround my community, two by two. I exchange greetings with the elder and hear the welcome chant. Returned from the hunt, I smell the herbs in the hanging baskets and anticipate the warmth of the blankets; soon I will be ensorcelled by the beads of the evening words woven simply as elders relay the month's events to the soothing drumbeat. Soon I will attain kinaaldé-- I will grind the corn and assume my place of honour. But tonight, I will rest. Carole Mertz Carole Mertz enjoys the many aspects of ekphrastic poetry. She writes in Parma, Ohio, where she is enmeshed in the parallels between music performance and the creation of poetry. Her latest work is published in World Literation Today. ** Dream Catcher "... Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass, And the eyes of those two Indian ponies Darken with kindness. They have come softly out of the willows... Suddenly I realize that if I stepped out of my body I would break Into blossom." A Blessing, James Wright Two triangles seamed at the horizon are earth, air, fire and water respectively, rearranged, but two in the symbol system of the Lakota Sioux... In Houston, I'm surprised at work by my daughter's friend, visiting as I sell folk art in a shop where I didn't expect anyone to ask me for a poem -- one of mine -- to be blessed on an altar at a Sun- Dance Festival in Iowa. That night, I thought I could feel the wild pulse of the Indians, dancing (it's said I'm a little bit psychic); the motion of their spiritual passion as they called out for a vision of their "founder," a buffalo woman, who comes down, white like an empty page or canvas until life erupts in seven colours like a rainbow & the buffalo goes from sunlit gold to thunder-line gray in the cloud-clustered music of poetry. They say her truth is hidden, accessed when the day ends in a challenge; when red is as sacred as fire and blood, and carmine clouds bloom at sunset. It will be the hour of the buffalo, bison- brown as the earth where I plant seeds in a shade-tended garden, a flower bed for multi-coloured blooms of zinnias. & on the day I prune weeds to release new life, I hear your voice calling down to me from heaven: What's happened to us, Cloud Wife? Were we dreams that end in fiction? 2. Now the buffalo is wearing light, her soul- dress beaded like a bride's her gift from the Wakan Tanka (the Great Spirit of the Lakota.) Four times she comes (North, South, East and West) watchful as a mother; in another form she is black by night to show the colours of the world by moonlight like a woman changing dresses to colourize the Indians dancing a Sun Dance at the heart of nature, this moment described by a computer comment: Aware of his own serenity, the eyes of a spectator absorbed the plush grass [sweet grass to the Lakota] the beautifully blue sky, and the clear streams [where he hears] every note of the chirping birds -- 3. & as the dancers came closer, ever closer to the land legend calls The Realm of The Deceased Relatives their dance steps were a ritual of light as twilight streamed across the sun that sky I could see from a childhood window; where the clouds would one day hold Nellie Two Bear's suitcase, unpacked where I imagined an oasis, blue, with a reindeer who lowered the wife bowl of his antlers to drink water, clear as crystal, the fruit of rainfall in an unseen eternity. Bad dreams could not find me there when I was seven, close to heaven, where outside was inside where even clouds were horses; I called them in from the moon's chalk field and when my room was filled, I walked among them like a gypsy, touching shadows, manes -- reciting names as nature sang the seven songs of the Lakota and I believed that dreams could unite earth and heaven. Laurie Newendorp Newendorp's bio is, in part, a dedication: to Sarita Streng, her daughter's friend who went to the Indian Festival in Iowa; and in memory of the poet's grandmother, who taught at an Indian Reservation in New Mexico after her retirement from the Austin Public Schools. Honoured multiple times by The Ekphrastic Review's challenges, Laurie Newendorp worked in a folk art shop in Houston for many years. She was fortunate in visiting Acoma, the Indian Reservation called "Sky City," where she met Laurencita Herrera, a Pueblo artist who created pottery storyteller dolls. The Sun Dance is a ritual to renew life; as mentioned in the poem, it is unrelated to the Sundance Film Festival.  The Vision of Faust, by Luis Ricardo Falero (Spain) 1878 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 Vision of Faust, by Luis Ricardo Falero. Deadline is October 24, 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 FALERO 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, OCTOBER 24, 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.  An Urban Tree, by Suzy King (Australia) contemporary Only Connect So caught up in this web of wires, though spiderbeam maintaining all, in ether’s where the power lies - with no escape from ties that bind. Once mycorrhiza at its root, now route held as its canopy, this tree of life, its bark now byte, was current totem of this tribe. Like pylons marching cross the vale - this outlook not for outback too - but crossing for the local train of eyes surveying what’s below. See shoots break, twigs, from seasoned wood; despite its urban work, urbane, humility in bearing loads - another tree cross comes to mind. With clasps, gripped clips, pole dancing would bring gasp when grasp what voltage streamed; vein lifeblood coursing city lines, this ruby flow with barbs, bolts, knots. ’Mongst light, string shadows, looking up, with tackle found round junction box, both bands and blocks by column shaft, some curvature of curlicues. Connections found in detail oiled, these interactions of the scape, the labours of those engineers who grounded means, communicate. Here’s infrastructure, history, with birds and bees, community; how good it is to celebrate the vision of true artistry. 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 ** A Silent Buzz As current flows through the wires That almost inaudible buzz inspires Waking up each intended recipient A poke in their brain, yet innocent Conveying that critical information For some subsequent dissemination Whether as a secret or even shared Or for an announcement prepared At a distance, that buzz is the same Never knowing from whom it came But wires almost seem to never end From pole to pole ‘til they descend Where a buzz is converted to sound And its clearer meanings are found But even then, it might still not die As it’s likely that there’ll be a reply Howard Osborne Howard is a UK citizen, retired. Published author of non-fiction reference book, scientific papers and poetry. Interests mainly creative writing (poetry, novel, short stories, songs and scripts), music and travel. ** The Telephone Pole My big brother propelled my small body towards the wooden pole that had all those cables crossing high up in the sky. He pressed my ear to the wood and we stood silent while I listened to the little people that lived inside the pole, murmuring in the old language. Rose Mary Boehm Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as eight poetry collections. Her poetry has been published (and rejected) widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was several times nominated for a Pushcart’and Best of Net. Her eighth book Life Stuff was published by Kelsay Books (November 2023). A new chapbook, The Matter Of Words, Kelsay Books (June 2025) is now on Amazon, and she just finished a new, full-length manuscript. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/ ** Hangs in Balance Almost Always Precariously At any juncture, the world might change... A message sent, another delayed Nothing's ever guaranteed to remain the same... Whatever interlinks us all We call fate and destiny Hangs in balance almost always precariously Almost always precariously One heart might swim while another might drown... The proof is in living out your dreams... And realizing all that you can become And realizing all that you can become And realizing all that you can imagine Without subtraction, subtraction, subtraction. At any juncture, the world might change... A message sent, another delayed A fallen angel no longer descends... But is gratefully rescued from any more turmoil And equally an innocent is saved... from being enslaved to a darkness uncaged, nocturnal that wants to see you drown without hope while another wants to see you flourish unscathed While even now another wants to see a prince The prince has been transformed. Turned into a toad. Turned into a toad. One that’s disfigured on the journey home On the road. On the journey home. One heart might swim while another might drown... The proof is in living out your dreams... And realizing all that you can become And realizing all that you can become And realizing all that you can imagine Without subtraction, subtraction, subtraction. That is the only way to avoid dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction, dissatisfaction And find some real traction. 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. ** Urban Tree: a Stobie Pole Reverie When I dream, I look up. I see realness and rot Texture and termites Topped with glorious Jumbles of wire. But I am steel and concrete Tie-bolted and flanged Smooth and bare Without crevice or crack. Then I look down And see you on the ground With stencils and paint Making me beautiful, Making me art. Lara Dolphin A descendant of immigrants, Lara Dolphin lives with her family among the Allegheny Mountains of Central Pennsylvania on the ancestral land of the Susquehannock/Iroquois people. She has written three chapbooks In Search of the Wondrous Whole, Chronicle of Lost Moments, and At Last a Valley. She, like countless others, hopes for a world filled with greater peace. ** Night Call Over Broken Wires The phone rings that way after midnight, when the first deep cycle of sleep is almost complete, when dreams are raw and the throat thickens. In one, the one that keeps threading itself on a spool to be projected on closed eyelids, ravens roost on urban trees within my head, there is a gray road and bare wires roped from bent electrical poles anointed with pitch. These stretch over the edge of a flat horizon. We walk without a word, familiar strangers, facing orange clouds that rise ahead. And when it starts to rain, I fall awake. The voice at that early hour breaks with grief, as I try to picture a face and form the words to stop this crying, pretending my motive is love. Royal Rhodes Royal Rhodes is a poet who lives in rural Ohio, surrounded by a nature conservancy and Amish farms. He enjoys the birds, deer, and other creatures who are his neighbours. ** Wood Wide Web We, humans, live in a bandwidth of mimicry Grow within a mainframe of intimacy Taking protocols from nature and translating them into Java and C++ And as urbanized, buzz-tree beings We work within thresholds; often not seeing The web of networked, electrical architecture feeding us To the deep dark below, we route our data In value shaped brackets coding <banana banana banana> With cabled server braids in an exchange of resource packages Reaching the cloud above, we scale Jenga’s fragile tower While the MPS are increasing, we are slowing to trickle charge power A missing markup beyond reality 101 fails and fractures But there is agility in our development Secrets the trees give us in their operating system We have no more to do but rise beyond our screens Search bar the sky in GPS synced time Right click the UX of natural whys And appreciate the forests’ beauty lining our streets 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. ** Bodies in Place Even a hint of a shape or form awaken memories long thought to be extinct: There were trees there are trees no more but they do in fact every so often undergo resurrection as phantom images, fata morganas, and holograms carefully piled between day and night where I have lost myself But why? Just to remind me and tell me again as if I never heard that they live on in fragments of remembrance sometimes they even attain fragrances carried by the wind Now I remember! They spoke in languages beyond words voices so timid they weren’t often heard in the street Now I remember! Trees had faces Trees had faces whose fleeting glances helped hold bodies firmly in place in the world Jakob Brønnum Jakob Brønnum has published poetry and other work in his native Danish and in English. His latest books are the partly ekphrastic A Poetry Encyclopedia of Dreams (Cyberwit, 2025) and Dreamscape Journeys (Cyberwit, 2025). He lives in Sweden. ** Progress In the fields the pylons march like futuristic giants their wires bristling and ready to spark with power and domination offering no haven. In the streets the poles stand, bees buzzing in the shelter of their wires. Their trunks stand still wooden, statuesque, hoping to stay unnoticed as their wires rust with flakes falling like autumn leaves. Soon both will have to go underground. Lynn White Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries ofdream, fantasy and reality. She has been nominated for Pushcarts, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Consequence Magazine, Firewords, Vagabond Press, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes Journal. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com. ** Connections The sky weaves and unweaves distances into a tree of messages. The criss-crossing signals branch to connect, to communicate the right notes of green. Coherent fragments of syllables are held by nuts, clasped by bolts – the rustle of breath and the whispers of voice. The meter holds the readings of time like a nest of imperceptible decisions - left or right, which way to go. The bees are apparitions dispatched to faraway lands at the speed of an electron. The wrinkled wooden pole holds it all together, like an ancient bark of strength The wires wake up in a constellation of crackles like a hundred birdsongs. Preeth Ganapathy Preeth Ganapathy is from Bengaluru, India. Her works have been published in several magazines, more recently, in Pensive, Braided Way, The Orchard Poetry Journal and elsewhere. Her microchaps A Single Moment, Purple and Birds of the Sky have been published by Origami Poems Project. Her work has been nominated for Best Spiritual Literature. ** The Loom Here I stand in the centre of this swirl of clicks and messages. I have no say in where they come from or where they go. Voiceless voices stroke endearments from the air. Anger heats the wires, but rain cools its ardour. All I do is help them shuttle on their way. They have no meaning, only the sky has meaning. These little flirts of knowledge pass and fade. Life is for talking and the warp is only there to keep it company. I know how tall I stand to carry my loom up to the sky, high above the mundane scuttling down below Whatever tapestries the words may weave, mine is the loom from which the patterns flow. Edward Alport Edward Alport is a retired teacher and international business executive living in the UK. He occupies his time as a poet, gardener and writer. He has had poetry, articles and stories published in various webzines and magazines and performed on BBC Radio and Edinburgh Fringe. His Bluesky handle is @crossmouse.bsky.social. His website is crossmouse.wordpress.com ** A Telephone Pole in Cincinnati: Ring ring, ring ring, ring- “Honey I have something to tell you..” “After she left me, I have been feeling blue.” “I can’t wait for her to say the words, ‘I do’” “Hey can you help me? I tried my dad but the call won’t go through.” “Hello, you've reached the Judge's answering service”, “Dude she's coming over in a half hour and I'm totally nervous” “Hey, do you want to go this weekend with me to the circus?” “Yes I would love to have that two o'clock appointment, that would be perfect.” “Hi Grandma, I wanted to call to wish you a happy birthday..” “Susan, why did you leave the cat with me you jerk? She can’t stay..” “Gretchen, I need your help with the homework, I don’t understand Feng shui..” “No red icing, I only want green on the cake” “Yeah dad, I’m at the museum and I’m calling you on a phone from 1942!” “Hi Mr. Davenport, I’m looking to speak with Mary-Lou” “And then I told him, oh no, A-choo!” “Hi, yes you have the wrong number, the previous owners have moved” A telephone pole, something to wrap yourself to during a storm. A steadfast of the time. Remember when placing a call cost only a dime? When’s the last time you called the Cincinnati Weather Line? 514-241-1010, dial the number and call them again. Ryan Steremberg Ryan Steremberg is a recent graduate of Muhlenberg College, having spent half of the past two years studying in Copenhagen, Denmark. Writing since 2018, his work comprises of poetry, short plays, and short fiction. His work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, and has been accepted to appear in an upcoming Wingless Dreamer publication. ** Urban Trees The pole stands tall and holds lines that connect to all around. Routing power like a heartbeat, constant source to life below. At some distant power station generators constant thrum pour their output down these lines to poles like this across the land. We take for granted the role poles play, who route all power to those connected, each home or business web crisscrossings from the wellspring source unceasing Soldiers standing guard and holding lines essential to our needs, perches for some birds all baffled by these leafless urban trees. Bill Hudson Bill is retired and lives in Davenport Iowa. He is a member of the Quint Cities Poets and has had a number of poems published in The Lyrical Iowa, The Dubuque Gallery and The Rockford Review. He enjoys ekphrastic writing challenges and is looking forward to further images on this site. ** conversation where did you grow up I asked the utility pole I cannot decipher your birthplate its numbers and letters meaningless were you born in a forest of Douglas firs or Southern Yellow Pines your birth date is unknown but the year you were harvested stripped of bark and branches perhaps festooned with surge arresters like giant bees in disguise metal bands and lashings your open crossarm welcomes wires and insulators an invitation to scampering squirrels a gathering place for birds I wish you roots to again drink sweet water I wish you still dressed in needles and cones did you just speak or was that the wind shaking your guy-wire a sort of buzzing or contented humming you answer me in light that pools on the street and fills my window Kat Dunlap Kat Dunlap grew up in Pennsylvania and now resides in Massachusetts where she is a member of the Tidepool Poets of Plymouth. She holds an M.Ed. from UMass Boston and an MFA from Pacific University. She edited two college writing publications as well as the Tidepool Poets Annuals. She was Director of the National Writing Project site at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and currently conducts writing retreats on Cape Cod. Her chapbook The Blue Bicycle is being prepared for a spring launch. ** Rational Animals This weathered wood Powering on Its restless branches Rusting forth Since 1850 This wild wood Shooting stars beneath its bark Nature, human viewed Observant, but Intrusive Since staying put Would nomads not Carry a message across On the pulse of their heart Stien Pijp ** It / The Sentinel Abiding in peace, it perches near the commuter train, Bulwark of silent oversight, sexless, nameless, it sits, tight, upright- Conduit of many communications, birds, bees, and humans, too Doing all of the business that birds, bees, and humans do- Earth-bound, in the ground, a souvenir, a shell- Fasted to wires and forced against its will- Green, green it used to be, a lively home, an abundant tree, Home for some, still, still and ungreen, ungrowing, it simply stands- Ignored until needed, by Arthropod, Chordate, and Human- Jubilant noise scatters when the Chick-A-Dees monopolize the wire- Kvetching, and singing of bird things and bees hum with the choir- Latching onto the glinting orange clips, used to attach various wires to It- Meanwhile the humans hum through the heavy lines, all abuzz, Nothing buzzes like a human with not much to say, and all day Open to talk anyway- and so The Sentinel feels needed during the day- Present and happy in its former-tree way. Quietly, It dreads nightfall, when Bees and Birds and men go to their Restoration, deep in the night- it remains alone until Sunlight returns to lessen its plight- Trees can stretch out while the winds shake off leaves, Under the canopy, lilting with the breeze, connected underneath by roots- Vexed that it can no longer feel its own shoots, It, the former tree Waxes and wanes with the hum of the trains, and some feeling remains- Xenial hospitality, welcoming guests-it Zig zags with electric life, nevertheless. Debbie Walker-Lass Debbie Walker-Lass, (she/her) is a poet, collage artist, and writer living in Decatur, Georgia. Her work has appeared in Collaborature, The Rockvale Review, Green Ink Poetry, The Ekphrastic Journal, Punk Monk, Poetry Quarterly, The Light Ekphrastic, and The Niagara Poetry Journal, among others. Debbie was proud to be nominated by TER for the Best Small Fictions, 2024 anthology. Debbie is an avid Tybee Island beachcomber and lover of all things nature. She also enjoys collaborating with Jahzara Wood, they write poetry together as “The 1965.” ** Early Morning Connection I heard the ringing from the wall-mounted phone near the living room on Whittenton Street as dad jumped out of bed to answer it before the third ring woke the entire family. A desk sergeant relaying The message that the store alarm had been set off. At 2 am, I accompanied dad in the blue 50 Desoto coupe the three and a half miles to Taunton Green where A cruiser was parked in front of Foster’s Men’s Clothing. As we approached the officer, he instructed dad to unlock the front door and proceed into the store. Unable to contain myself I indicated to him that he had a gun, and if this If there was a break-in, he should take the lead. Jim Brosnan A Pushcart nominee, Dr. Jim Brosnan is the author of Long Distance Driving (2024) and Nameless Roads (2019), copies available at [email protected]. His poems have appeared inthe Aurorean (US), Crossways Literary Magazine (Ireland), Eunoia Review (Singapore), Nine Muses (Wales), Scarlet Leaf Review (Canada), Strand (India), The Madrigal (Ireland), The Wild Word(Germany), and Voices of the Poppies (United Kingdom). He holds the rank of full professor at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI. ** When Birds are Gone from the Wire the air will be absent chirp song, feeders, pregnant with untouched seed, trees, shelters for abandoned hideaways. When spring arrives without chickadees, wood frogs, butterflies, and bumblebees, the promise of a fresh green start will fade like patience in an instant world, loons will no longer wail to their mates, sunrises will lose their soundtrack. When dandelions and hibiscus fail to bloom there’ll be no reason to run barefoot or catch fireflies in an open field; engaging with an ecosystem out of whack will feel as meaningless as skipping the perfect stone over a lifeless sea. When birds are gone from the wire we’ll wake to realize there’s no turning back. Elaine Sorrentino Elaine Sorrentino, author of Belly Dancing in a Brown Sweatsuit (Kelsay Books, 2025) has been published in journals such as Minerva Rising, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Gyroscope Review, Ekphrastic Review, Quartet Journal, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Cool Beans Lit, and Haikuniverse. A fan of ekphrastic poetry, she is facilitator of the Duxbury Poetry Circle. ** Suburban Trees It is said in suburbia, you knew your curfew was up when the streetlights came on Summer days were spent running, biking, playing street hockey and basketball, Exploring the woods and frogging by the creek The world was safe, and kids roamed free in the shade of suburban trees They served as a perching spot for an assortment of birds, Robins, sparrows, crows, and an occasional hawk Morning doves cooed in the cool mist of dawn, While children walked to the bus stop and dads started their cars They were interspersed with other trees, like maple, pine and birch, With rhododendrons and azaleas next to everyone’s front porch. In the wintertime, big icicles hung from these trees, While children built snowmen and snow forts beneath Snowball fights provided hours of fun, While we waited for the storm to pass and everything thawed The newer neighbourhoods across town didn’t have suburban trees, But rather fiber optic cables run through the ground underneath. New houses built three times the size of ours, Over old farms and forests that had been torn down But though nuclear families each had their own homes The neighbourhood still had a life of its own Through whispers of gossip and the hum of lawn mowers Dads exchanging lawn care advice and snowblowers Through Fourth of July picnics and block parties Friendships were forged and life lessons learned in the shade of suburban trees. Lila Feldman Lila lives in Upstate New York with her husband and works in healthcare. She enjoys creative writing in her spare time, mostly prose and memoir. This is her second time submitting to The Ekphrastic Review. ** Urban Tree hire wire bees on trapeze world communications buzzing toward power stations rising rising through cloudless skies a living hive crackling criss-crossing intersections of high wire Kate Young Kate Young lives in England and enjoys writing poetry, painting and playing the guitar, ukulele and mandolin. Her poems have appeared in various webzines, magazines, and Chapbooks. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlets A Spark in the Darkness and Beyond the School Gate have been published by Hedgehog Press. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet or on her website kateyoungpoet.co.uk ** Leaving the Nest A bright orange painted the horizon, the sun woke up with a smile giving breath to the green pastures that waved back, the dusk of the city streets and the blue birds who cheerfully sung their song. Many say that a bluebird’s song is the heartbeat of hope and the echo of dreams yet to come. Dreams are wings we borrow from tomorrow, yet there is no dream like that of animal born to fly. High above the busy road, empty sidewalks and pavement marked with cracks stood a wooden power pole, its splintered body acting as a bridge for the many wires that clung to it and stretched out in in many directions. The wires carried a slight humming sound, like the string of an instrument, vibrating with every blow of wind that passed. They not only held the electricity but the weight of a family of blue birds with feathers so blue, they mocked the sky and waters. This small flock of birds chose this unlikely place to call home. Their nest was forged together with straw, forgotten scraps of paper and twigs, an architecture of chance bound against the metal brace of the pole. Every morning that God blessed these birds with, they would line themselves along the powerline. Their small feet wrapped around the metal, balancing on the electrical line The power line functioned as a bridge, a connection between many worlds, They stood high above the busy two-way street watching over all the vehicles that zoomed by like flying fish in the open waters. They appreciated the time they spent here as they were in preparation for leaving the nest. One by One, the blue-feathered sky-dwellers began to leave. The eldest of the flock spread her wings first towards the Northeastern wire, leaving with such haste, eager to explore more of the world and leaving the place she called home. Her song carried down the power line, an echoing goodbye they will all live to remember. Another leapt off the wire, but in a different direction, the same for the next one and the rest. Their goodbyes soft and brief as though they planned to return. The youngest bird, who had spots of gray marked across his wings, held the concept that it was simply a tradition, so he stayed put awaiting their arrival, knowing well that they would return to the nest filling the line with chatter. The young bird pressed his claws against the humming wire allowing the subtle vibration to run along his tiny blue feathered body. He listened to the chatter of the folks gathered on the streets below and the deafening environment of the skyscraper jungle. He watched his nest as it grew silent, the interior so hollow it chirped back like an abandoned house. The nest looked suited to a family of birds, but it felt empty, the warmth had since faded. The young blue bird had not realized their goodbyes were final, he trusted the winds would drift back to him. Our feathered friend remained on the wire for another three weeks, unsure whether he should leave. Each Day this question echoed endlessly in his mind until he accepted that his family belonged to the sky and would never return. For that reason, the gray spotted bluebird leapt from the wire with his wings slicing through the morning air like knife through butter. His head held up high, wings spread out as far as possible and a song so beautiful, nothing could compare. As the young avian took flight into the blue skies, he then realized why his lost family left the nest, the sense of freedom is for the best True discovery and exploration of yourself begins with a journey on your own horizon. Jelani Simons Jelani Simons is a young Black individual from Sandys, Bermuda. He spends his free time playing video games, watching sitcoms, anime, basketball, and listening to R/B & Christian music. He also likes playing basketball and going for nature walks. He enjoys exploring the city. ** blue sky steps standing outside on my blue sky steps i climb the walls and up the poles so you can see me up there on the ledge the edge of whatever this world wants today and the edge of a grandstand and birds they grip wires tightly and hold on we all spend so much time on high wires holding on and we connect and you see me through the window an open sky and the wires still hang there to show us the way mystify and some they say we were better off when the poles were put in and the crews came out to the country in the ‘50s and plugged us in and most of us climbing those blue sky steps put the old radio away and the batteries thrown away and there was something new to plug into and now well now we plug in and no wires needed and they don’t hum anymore and i can’t get up that high and there’s no point in climbing anything let alone a pole when i can sit on my couch unplugged with all of you around me on the edge of whatever the world wants today mike sluchinski mike sluchinski knows the perils of the high stakes cutthroat poetry game and bets it all on the ekphrastic review and a bunch of great readers and editors at failed haiku, inlandia journal, kaleidotrope, eternal haunted summer, the wave (kelp), the literary review of canada, the coachella review, welter, poemeleon, lit shark, proud to be vol. 13, the ekphrastic review, meow meow pow pow, kelp journal, the fib review, syncopation lit. journal, south florida poetry journal (soflopojo), freefall, pulpmag, and more coming! ** The Technological Tree: It was the dawn of autumn; an unpredictable date compared to June 21st and December 21st. What was an ordinary day for strolling with the dogs led to unexpected mental fabrications. All because of a freshly painted electric pole I had walked past. The fact that its rusted cables still hadn’t caused a blackout in daytime surprised me. How uncanny that an electric pole could look like a tree, right? So I will try to visualize it as a tree. It’s not a scion of Gaia, just like the trillions that drape her in various colours every year. It’s not a god’s craft, the kind they tell you in church, mythology, and books about symbolism in the arts. If anything, Man assembled this arboreal abomination of aluminum alloy. But then again, isn’t that the idea? An electric pole is the technological tree of Knowledge and Life combined. It’s not one of a kind, but one in millions within a global grove. Civilization built a civic Eden; our sapience is tethered to those trees. Lucifer’s forbidden fruit is no longer an apple… Unless you count Apple. Adam and Eve’s new temptations were Hubbell*, Hertz*, and the Bernes-Lee*. I bite into a Pink Crisp as I write my biblical perspective on Microsoft Word. Celine Krempp * Harvey Hubbell discovered electricity * Heinrich Hertz discovered radio waves * Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web Celine is a French-American with her paternal family from the Northeast side of France. Working part-time as an art museum security guard inspires Celine in her ekphrastic writing. She is new to The Ekphrastic Review, having written “Her Final Performance” and “Agwé’s Believer” for the challenges. When she’s not brainstorming her next creative project, she walks her dog VanGogh, reads books, indulges in sweet cravings, and binge-watches The Magic School Bus on Tubi out of nostalgia. Celine is constantly jotting down ideas for short form writing inspired by her emotions, personal and professional experiences. Many people, including her therapist and colleagues, have described her work as “a relatable commentary with vivid imagery.” ** The Backbone of Communication There is a telephone pole outside the track, Wires stretching like veins on my hand. They carried my voice the day I broke down, After fouling every throw, Watching my chance at states slip away. I called my mom with tears in my throat, My dreams are heavy in pieces at my feet. The line rang, then her voice arrived- Steady, warm and unshaken. She told me that I was more Than a missed mark or a scoreboard. Later, her text lit up my phone- “I’m proud of you no matter what”. Just words, simple letters, But they carried strong through the wires, That is the backbone of communication Not technology, not circuits or the steel, But the love that travels through them. A reminder that even in failure, I was not alone. Rhiana Thomas Rhiana Thomas is passionate about creativity, community and making a positive impact. She has worked on projects that mix art, fashion and education, including teaching and hosting events focused on sustainable practices. Rhiana values compassion, determination, kindness and leaving a positive mark wherever she goes, always striving to uplift those around her. ** circuits what was once but now is not -- felled and replanted, rootless, disconnected from its source -- yet still elemental, sustained by the essence of its structure surface fading quietly, barely noticed beneath appendages stripped away and replaced by wires, veins searching for a heart, currents vibrating like questions searching for an answer, rings mapping memories of leaves and wings, forgotten forests shadowed with threads of distant voices random paths crossing over each other until it’s impossible to know what was created out of what—layers of stories patched into unfinished dreams 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/. ** The Lonely Seagull It’s a sunny day in the summer. Everybody is on the beach. But there is this telephone pole with many wires going in different directions, that’s in the middle of the beach parking lot and on that pole, there is this curious looking seagull. He is all white and has grey wings. He is a lonely seagull, and he has no friends or lovers that he is interested in. Every day you will see him at nine clock sharp on that pole when everybody starts coming to the beach, and then he starts yelling for no reason at all, he just wants everybody to hear him and know that he is here. He is always watching people. He has staring contests with everybody at the beach. When he is standing on the pole, he can see everything that is going on, he also sometimes watches people and what they are doing. Today he is watching the people, on one side he is seeing kids get ice cream and another thing he is seeing is all of the food trucks in the parking lot and all of the different smells coming from them and he is watching people leave and come in to the beach, people who are here every day are starting to wonder, does he ever leave or go get something to eat? Because he has been standing there for hours on end just looking at people he doesn’t know. Then let me tell you about this very special day that happened! He was still standing on the pole at the beach when this other seagull came flew over and sat on one of the wires, he was huge and he had black wings, he had two fishes, he put them down draping over the wires, he didn’t like that he had company, but the black winged seagull gave him one of his fishes. He was being friendly, so they started talking in seagull language and all of the sudden they both flew away together!! The next day they both came back and now they both started watching the beachgoers together. Now he is no longer alone in life, and he is very happy for the first time. And now he will always be happy as a seagull with a French fry!! Addy Schonemann Her name is Addy Schonemann, She grew up in Newburyport, Massachusetts. She graduated from Newburyport High school. In college she studied Culinary Arts for four years at Johnson & Wales University. Some of her favorite foods to make are pasta dishes, and anything that looks tasty. Then in high school, she got her first job, which was at a local hospital’s kitchen, her role at work was to bring the food to the patients. She is a very crafty person; she loves to crochet and listen to music. ** Standing Tall It is not a tree, but a mirror of one, its wires, the branches, extending long, holding the weight of many voices, signals, stories. There is no need for rhyme just the truth of human need, of reaching, of connecting, of feeling less alone amid concrete and steel. In this engineered tree, life flows through unseen currents. A testament to our desire to be heard. Nivedita Karthik Nivedita Karthik is a graduate in Immunology from the University of Oxford and a professional Bharatanatyam dancer. Her poems have appeared in many national and international online and print magazines and anthologies. She has two poetry books to her credit (She: The Reality of Womanhood and Pa(i)red Poetry). Her profile showcasing her use of poetry was recently featured in Lifestyle Magazine. ** Content Warning Yes, you’re right, ma’am, some people do call it a “trigger warning.” I’m just trying to alert everyone that I’m about to show an image of...What? Oh, no, sir, you don’t need to excuse yourself, you can simply step outside or just close your eyes if you prefer. Like I was saying, I’m going to show an image of the aftermath, and people who are sensitive may wish to...Excuse me? Am I going to show the body? No, of course not. This photograph was taken after the removal, and I can tell you firsthand that was a gargantuan effort...I’m sorry, no, that wasn’t meant as a joke. I apologize if that was insensitive. If anyone understands the damage a giant on the rampage can cause, well, you know we had this problem just across the county line last year. That’s why your mayor brought me here to talk with you tonight. Because we found a way to rid ourselves of that behemoth before he ate any more...Virgins? Can you please speak up, it’s hard to hear you all the way in the back. It sounds like you asked whether we tried offering virgins to the giant? Well ma’am, that might save your livestock, but I imagine the virgins might not be too happy with that plan...Folks, the mayor has just reminded me that the giant usually awakens by dawn, so we need to move this along. I’m going to go ahead and show the image now. See, when we were under attack in Littleton, we found a way to lure the giant into the power lines...I’m afraid you’re right ma’am, those red stains aren’t rust, that’s why I issued the warning about...Did it hurt the giant when we turned the power back on? Well, I’ll admit, that wasn’t our biggest concern after that incident with the school bus...Yes, it was full of children at the time. So. We know electrocution works, and...No, I don’t think a nuclear strike would be more effective! Anyway, if you just look Tracy Royce Tracy Royce is a writer and poet whose words appear in Bending Genres, Does It Have Pockets?, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Villain Era, and elsewhere. She lives in Southern California where she enjoys hiking, playing board games, and obsessing over Richard Widmark movies. You can find her on Bluesky. ** Woman, Crow and Telephone Pole (Easter Sunday, April, 1985) The damp hush of dawn becomes a crow's voice, his silhouette bluing into raw song while his legs stay anchored to an old clock tower marking east from west parking lot from railroad track A woman feels him cry, his throat strained and stretching a prayer toward her heart and a huge pole that binds a blend of wires - soon to be plucked by wind, to carry the calls of people who still dial their beloved kin and share as if angels the risen light and good news. Joy comes in the morning. Its bright fingers loosen the draw strings of night and love for a man who shares her bread and tea, who stares at the urban tree, thankful for how it guards and insulates the sound of a soul — that like her own becomes a personal psalm Wendy Howe Wendy Howe is an English teacher and free lance writer who lives in Southern California. Her work is deeply influenced by diverse cultures, history, myth and women's issues. Over the years, she has appeared in a number of journals including: Liminality, Silver Blade, Eye To The Telescope, Strange Horizons, Carmina Magazine, Songs of Eretz, The Winged Moon, Eternal Haunted Summer and Sage Woman. Her most recent work appears in The Otherworld Magazine. ** Untitled The little boy stands there on the kitchen tile floor, looking at the phone on the wall that is just out of his reach. He runs to the kitchen table, drags over a chair, places it right under the phone, and hops up onto it. He sings out the tune of the song he made to remember his best friend's phone number. He punches in the number and hops off the chair, running to the window with the phone. The line stretches the farthest it can go as the little boy looks out onto the street. He stares at the phone poll, imagining the call traveling through the cords to the house across the street where his friend lives. The phone rings two more times before a lady picks up the phone. “Hello?” the lady says in a kind voice. “Hi! This is Christopher. Is Jake free to play?” he asks, still staring out the window. “Hello, Christopher! Yes, he will be right out! He says to bring your baseball bat!” Christopher runs and hangs the phone back on the wall. He runs to his room and grabs his baseball bat, a ball, and a glove. He runs out the door, shouting “Momma, I will be home for dinner!” and then he is gone. It is a warm sunny day in the summer. Kids are outside in the yard playing in the sprinklers, and moms are sitting on lawn chairs drinking lemonade. The boys grab their bikes and ride down the street to the park, where there is a big open field. They start to throw the ball back and forth. “Do you think every summer will be like this?” Christopher asks. “I hope so. But get this! My mom says that next summer, for my tenth birthday, I could get a phone line to my bedroom! Isn’t that so cool?” Jake says. “That is so cool! Then I can call you and not have to talk to your mom every time.” Christopher and Jake laugh. “You should ask your mom for one too!” Jake suggests. “No thanks, I’m good with the one in the kitchen.” Christopher shrugs. “What? Why?” Jake asks. “Well, I like to look at the phone wires when I call people, so I can imagine the call going through the cords to the pole and to the houses. But my room is in the back of the house, so how will I know if my calls go through if I don’t watch it?” Jake and Christopher continue to throw the ball back and forth. “Now that I think about it, my calls never go through when I try. I always have my mom call people and hand me the phone.” Jake says, throwing the ball to Christopher. “Well, do you watch the call go through the lines?” Christopher asks, throwing the ball back to Jake. “No,” Jake says, throwing the ball again. “Well then, maybe that's why.” Christopher shrugs, throwing the ball back at Jake, who gets hit with the ball because he got distracted watching a butterfly. “Ouch!” Jake shouts. “Maybe you need to watch more than the phone lines.” Christopher laughs as Jake runs to get the ball. Callie Aversano Callie Aversano is a writer/ songwriter originally from New Jersey, but found her way to Providence, Rhode Island, to pursue her passion in the Hospitality Industry. She is known for her diligence, caring for, and helping others, as well as writing her feelings down and turning them into songs. ** I Am One of Many they say we originate from the same thread, from the same roots; that we are humans, and nothing else; that we are connected, beyond species, through bodies and minds in ways science could never grasp; that we crave connections because we seek the roots we branched out of; that we separate in directions which will soon converge to that one point where we began; that the earth is round because we keep coming back; that the feet know to stand up because those who came before us did this too, to rise after a fall, to fall after a rise, to wake after sleeping, to sleep after waking; that we exist in a circle of life; that we are ones of many, connected to the same roots, the same thread; Manisha Sahoo Manisha Sahoo (she/her), from Odisha, India, has a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering and a Master’s in English. Her words have appeared in Inked in Gray, Usawa Literary Review, Bridges Not Borders, The Ekphrastic Review, Apparition Lit, Sylvia Magazine, Atticus Review, and others. You can find her on Instagram/X/Substack @LeeSplash ** Watching a Dying Planet My sister is clairvoyant. She knows that. So do I, but there’s no way we’re going to tell Mama. To Mama and almost everyone else in town, Mandy is a gifted artist who sells canvases at boardwalk art shows. Her current series of quirky utility poles is very popular. There’s not much she can do to change the future, so she turns her back on dying trees, the lack of rain, plight of bees, fireflies, and fishing industry. Staying calm is the kindest thing to do. Meteorologists alarm us enough already, and people find Mandy’s paintings whimsical. Some buyers joke that the jumbled wiring, knots, and bent arrows she adds to utility poles look like a dad’s failed handyman project. So Mandy keeps us looking up. Looking down only reminds us of what we’ve lost already. 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. In April, Alarie was proud to be named the 2025 Muse of The Writers Place. ** Along the Wires Wagtail, weary for a tree, Fairy wren and lorikeet, Strive no further. Come to me: Honey-eater, rest your feet. Fairy wren and lorikeet, Let me hold your nests, your chicks; Honey-eater, rest your feet On my kindly, rosy sticks. Let me hold your nests, your chicks: Find yourselves a living space On my kindly, rosy sticks. In the pulse of my embrace, Find yourself a living space: Take the shelter I can give; In the pulse of my embrace, Share my strength and make me live. Take the shelter I can give. Wagtail, weary for a tree, Share my strength and make me live. Strive no further. Come to me. Ruth S Baker Ruth S Baker has published in some online magazines, including The Ekphrastic Review. The birds mentioned here are all native to Australia. ** Mother Tree Transmogrified Stately Hemlock gracing my serenity & solitude 'til heathens chopped you down chopped you up ravaged your forest connections crowned you with medusa wires plastered your trunk with missing feline fliers How I panic when your wiry branches spark & sag breaking my connections with my weird, wired world Donna-Lee Smith DLS writes from Montreal, a city where there are more telephone poles than trees, a sad state of affairs as trees give us oxygen and shade. ** Join The Ekphrastic Review for some upcoming workshops... Click on image for more info or to register. The Art of Darkness: writing ekphrastic horror
CA$100.00
Join The Ekphrastic Review for a generative writing weekend, asynchronously online. Halloween is traditionally a time to contemplate the shadows lurking in the human heart and the spiritual realm. Art history repeatedly addresses disturbing and dark themes such as ghosts, witches, demons, monsters and murder. These can provide amazing fuel for dark stories and poems. This workshop includes a live zoom where we will look at the history of horror in art. Trigger warning! The session will take an unflinching look at macabre paintings on a variety of subjects, and talk about ways we can use them to inspire our own horror poems and flash fiction. We will also look at some ideas on what it means to write horror. Writers will receive the slides from the zoom along with a handout of horrifying art images to choose from, with questions to prompt their imagination. You will write three horror flashes or poems. You will receive feedback on one story or poem per day through Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Writers will work independently from wherever you are and connect and share their stories in a private Facebook group. Ekphrastic Electric: a grab-bag of art-inspired creativity
CA$35.00
This zoom session is a grab bag of creative writing exercises using art. There will be a handful of curated, diverse art prompts and writing ideas to ignite your imagination. There will be a brief introduction to each artwork, but the focus of this session is on writing. Georgia On My Mind: writing from the life and art of Georgia O'Keeffe
CA$35.00
Join us on zoom for deep dive into the life and work of Georgia O'Keeffe. One of the best loved American painters, and a pioneering woman artist, Georgia's works inspire countless poets. We will discuss Georgia's story, her work, influences, and inspirations, and we will also take inspiration from her vision with a few creative writing exercises.  Suitcase, by Nellie Two Bear Gates (USA/Lakota People) 1890-1910.. Photograph by Minneapolis Institute of Art employee., CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. 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 Suitcase, by Nellie Two Bear Gates. Deadline is October 10, 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 GATES 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, OCTOBER 10, 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.  Fishermen, by Hector Hyppolite (Haiti) 1946 Going for the Gold The day started out as always. Paulo joined the others as they headed out to sea with their handheld nets. He expected their haul to include parrotfish, small grouper, and snapper. These fish reproduced quickly. They were plentiful. Sometimes the fishermen could hook a sailfish, large grouper, or tuna. More money to turn over to his wife. Paulo quickly scanned the waters, paying particular attention to the known breeding grounds, especially near the reef. He unbuttoned the first few buttons of his shirt. Sat back in the boat and looked up at the sky. That’s when he saw them. A school of fly fish among the clouds. Gold, red. He could almost hear them squeal with glee as they somersaulted from pillow to pillow. Catching one of these could bring in good money. More money to turn over to his children. He couldn’t vouch for fly fish taste, but their rarity should speak for itself. He grabbed the net and aimed high. He stretched his arms again and again until he felt his muscles tear. And jumped. Barbara Krasner Barbara Krasner is the author of three poetry chapbooks, including an ekphrastic collection, Poems of the Winter Palace (Bottlecap Press) and a forthcoming ekphrastic poetry collection, The Night Watch (Kelsay Books). Her work has also been featured in more than seventy literary journals. She lives and teaches in New Jersey. Visit her website at www.barbarakrasner.com. ** Fishermen Our nets at the ready We think of our mothers, daughters, sisters, Aunties waiting. How might we outrun the storm To bring them our bounty? So close to the cliff our boat rocks, The fish mock us. We fear the rocks and the rain. These fish have no fear of stormy weather. They leap into our nets as if we were their mothers Calling them to dinner. Will we get home to our own mothers In time for dinner? Their braziers are ready. Our dry clothes, red, yellow, green, are waiting. We must not be late. Donna Reiss Writer, editor, teacher, bookmaker, and mixed media/paper artist, Donna lives in Greenville, South Carolina, where she is a member of the Greenville Center for Creative Arts, the Guild of American Papercutters, and the Poetry Society of South Carolina. Follow her on Instagram @dreissart. ** how not to catch a goldfish how to fish but not to disturb the spreading silver so that no small body leaves, or ever has to leave her. When I don’t hold a goldfish, and you don’t catch her, the sea has no orphans, no failing brightness, the gold remaining and the brightness is retained. We stand in the idling boat, threading the white silver with our bare hands. The white never loses her radiance since we decided to leave the goldfish Helen Pletts Helen Pletts: (www.helenpletts.com) Shortlisted five times for Bridport Poetry Prize 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023 and 2024, twice longlisted for The Rialto Nature & Place 2018 and 2022, longlisted for the Ginkgo Prize 2019, longlisted for The National Poetry Competition 2022. Second prize Plaza Prose Poetry 2022-23. Shortlisted Plaza Prose Poetry 2023-24. English co-translator of Ma Yongbo, representative of Chinese Avant-garde poetry. Her poetry is translated into Chinese, Bangla, Vietnamese, Greek, Italian, Arabic, Croatian, Romanian and Korean. ** Fishing When I was a boy, my mother would throw open the back screen door violently and yell my name into the summer Saturday mornings. Usually, I was hidden, beyond the backyard, out of visual range, if not aural. I knew when my father was going fishing, and that she always wanted me to go too. It was not selfish on her part. In the beginning, she wanted him to love me and with time, me him. But I learned to hide. I knew that his wispy patience would evaporate quickly, ending with him grunting loudly, “Maybe next time.” He would drive away, boat in tow, never looking in the mirror, each of us thinking we cared less than the other. We must have repeated a variation of that scene a dozen times. One Saturday, though, she laid in wait and pinned me before I escaped to the outdoors, making me sit and wait for him. When he entered the kitchen, he stared at me blankly realizing I was going along. He asked her about my lunch, to which she smiled and said, “whatever you’re having.” That was inconvenient as he was having beer. He stopped at the corner grocery and bought a cob of white bread, a half pound of pimento loaf, and two warm colas. He handed me the bag wordlessly, and I had nothing to add. My life was simple, but not bologna on white bread simple. We put the boat in on the Scioto River. Two of his friends from Kentucky, or maybe West Virginia, joined us. One of them smacked the back of my head and jokingly called me something vulgar. I don’t remember what. He smiled funny, so I wouldn’t take it poorly. We floated out to some sycamores near the ramp, and they immediately started casting. My father handed me a short pole with a bobber, and a small plastic tub of worms. He set the float about two feet above the hook and said, “when it goes down, you pull up.” I threaded the very end of the worm over the barb, hoping not to hit a vital organ. They laughed, and my father waved one of them off when he started to help me. We caught perhaps a hundred perch or bluegill that day. Each about the size of a grown man’s hand. I caught perhaps four or five myself, one on a hook I forgot to bait. When we got home, my father just said “yes” when my mother asked if I caught any fish. He cleaned them and then cooked them on a charcoal barbecue in the backyard. Smiling, he gave a lot away to neighbors. It was the best day I ever had with him. We did not go fishing again. I joined the Army a few years later, and we saw each other once or twice more before he died. G. L. Walters G. L. Walters lives in Boston, Massachusetts, with his partner and sits in the guestroom writing most days. He holds a J.D. from Cornell, an M.M.A.S. from the School of Advanced Military Studies, and an M.A. in English from SNHU. He is currently writing for an M.F.A. at Lindenwood. ** Deliverance Don’t be guided by me. I am Both more and less than all I seem. My words may glitter, but they are False friends, with mocking smiles and knowing eyes. This gate that I have guarded And for which, even now, I keep the key, Is wide enough for two, provided They walk through it side by side, holding hands. It leads to paradise, they say, And who am I to dispute their wisdom? I’ve watched it, night and day, for many years And yet I’ve never, ever, seen a unicorn. I quite agree. Just what does make paradise? For some it’s sunshine, and lone and level sands, For others, the mere fact of being born. Edward Alport Edward Alport is a retired teacher and international business executive living in the UK. He occupies his time as a poet, gardener and writer. He has had poetry, articles and stories published in various webzines and magazines and performed on BBC Radio and Edinburgh Fringe. His Bluesky handle is @crossmouse.bsky.social. His website is crossmouse.wordpress.com ** Craftmanship I met my wife in Port au Prince, by watchful eyes of Baby Doc; I will forebear to bore withal, not weary with strange circumstance, for fear Tonton Macoute about. Each taxi - Tap-tap - symbols swathed, a syncretistic blend of two, both Voodoo, Roman, catch-all type, dashboard paraphernalia, with Papa’s glower as final power. We learnt photography was out, one’s spirit stolen by the lens; but quite unfair, I took my chance, snapped fisherman atop his mast, before he bore us in his craft. He could not shield his eyes as climbed, for fear the crash would dash on deck; his hands tight wrapped around wood pole, this white man, tourist, flashed his cash, a stash more weighty than man’s food. She dropped sun glasses from boat side while, quick as flash, dugout canoe, a lad had dived, as finding pearl - retrieved and earned his dollar too, with admiration from the crew. We sailed to isle of La Gonâve, saw ceremony on the beach, converted oungan burning books, which incantations stormed his craft, while thunder rolled round heaving seas. I wonder now, some fifty on, that boatman, dare provide the scene - though not pathetic fallacy - the ciné, for tour mission fund, poor sailors of benighted land? Geography was not my strength, so I thought flight Tahiti bound; another art, though less a wife. I’m glad that Haïti entered life - some story for those folk back home. Engaged, for ring, we sponsored child, a Creole speaking girl at school. Her father was of fisherfolk, so she might climb some greasy pole, and wave goodbye to shifting sands. Hyppolyte - his canvas, card, with chicken feathers for a brush, discovered by surreal brand as the Grand Maître of his class - would learn to spread a wider net. 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 ** Big Bro Angles I bet you spotted the vintage net Grandpa bequeathed when fishing first hooked me – now my lucky charm lands me so many trophies. My eye’s snagged on at least ten desirables, plus Junior selling my fresh red snapper before we even reach shore. He handles sales. Says he’d rather do business. Says he didn’t inherit Papa’s sea legs. Peterson’s usual faraway look and slack line show me he’s meditating on lunch or Mirlande. He’s silent like a stealthfin. Doesn’t jig or troll. Doesn’t even read the teeming water or shifting sky. But I notice everything. Think I don’t see you? Helen Freeman Helen writes poems and flash fiction in Edinburgh and particularly loves responding to art. What a cool site this is! Her instagram is @chemchemi.hf ** Ellen’s Story Ellen was too late. The men had already cast off. She watched from the shore as the tide lured the boat away. Quint was at the bow, scowling and swearing, while Hooper fiddled with his equipment. And at the stern was Martin. She had missed her chance to persuade him to stay, to just let the experts hunt without him. Martin, who had narrowly escaped drowning as a child and now feared the water. He was nonetheless determined to help catch the shark that had terrorized their little island community: three people dead in seven days. In her dream the shark took Martin too, Ellen helpless as her husband was severed, consumed. She’d awakened to a tangle of sweat-drenched sheets, the man who’d lain beside her all these years gone. Then she’d run, sock feet slapping the ground all the way to the dock, but too slow, too late. Ellen watched the boat as it carried her husband out to sea, where a dorsal fin pierced the surface, and below... But then Martin looked up at her, raising his hand, and she saw that somehow a flying fish had clamped onto his sleeve. With a flick of his wrist he shook it off, then gave her a wave before turning back to help Hooper. Ellen took a deep breath, inhaling the ocean air, and for a moment it smelled of hope. Tracy Royce * “Ellen’s Story” celebrates the 50th anniversary of Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster, Jaws. Tracy Royce is a writer and poet whose words appear in Bending Genres, Does It Have Pockets?, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Villain Era, and elsewhere. Jaws is her favourite film of all time. You can find her on Bluesky. ** Inheritance What lies ancient, dark, over the ocean the sea-- deep, unending, without form? Our ancestors call us to return, echoing across the ebb and flow of time. Who arrives ready, open and fully awake, shining within what endures? Light glimmers, netted, caught as if in a held breath-- to be released, singing the 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/. ** Brightly Coloured Fishermen You’d think they would be hidden, these brightly coloured fishermen, from the fish beneath them, to be camouflaged from bass and cod, these men donned as polychromed avians seeking to capture herring: like rosy female phalaropes or gannets crowned in golden. Their nets like beaks of red-pouched pelicans and clamps as sleek as a cormorant’s tongs, such is their equipment. The pod of boat that rocks them in the wavering ocean hides them when only seen from the bottom of the salted water sea. Flashy jacketed fishermen, like lures dangling, taunting, hoping for a catch, to load carnelian- patched salmon under the indigo hatch along with iridescent bluefish. When in the mix a luring sound. A low-pitched siren squirming, singing in the rocking hold-- a Mermaid, half woman, holding on, emerging from unknown origin. Silver-scaled, her lower half reveals the mystery of abandoned paramours lost at sea, cast overboard to ever swim in the eddying coves collecting knobby domes of sea urchins in their secret pockets. Brightly coloured fishermen want notice from this damsel through their dress to woo the creature morphing into human when lifted from the hatch, with seaweed dangling from her palms of upraised hands clutching gems of sea glass, their milky hues reflecting vividly jacketed fishermen. Cynthia Dorfman Cynthia Dorfman writes in Maryland and Wisconsin, depending on the season. Her work has appeared in Bramble (literary magazine of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets), Moss Piglet Journal, and A Catalog of Small Machines (online publication of the Driftless Writing Center). ** Agwé’s Believer It was an ordinary day for fishing. The cotton coastal waters were calm though a distant storm brewed in the open ocean. Ten cichlids flopped in their twig-thin nets. The three young fishermen rowed their way back to the beach. Their friend in the crimson shirt was waiting for them. “I see today’s catch was good.” He anchored the boat for them. “Got enough cichlids to sell to the merchants,” the fisherman in the dandelion shirt said. “I’ll make enough money for my family,” the fisherman in the crimson vest said. “The catch was so good because I gave a good tribute to Agwé,” the fisherman in the emerald vest said. His warm-coloured friends stared at him coldly. “Not so loud! You want some nonmblan to hear you?” His friend in the dandelion shirt shushed him. “They’ll burn our boat if they catch on!” “I only spoke the truth…” “We know.” His friend in the crimson vest said. “But if they ask you, just say it was Jesus.” “But…” A red snapper splashed out of the blue and bit the fisherman in the crimson vest. The irritated man flung his arms like worms wriggling on hooks until his micro assailant let go, swimming away with leisure. This ordinary day for fishing went on differently for the four fishermen. As he wanted, the fisherman in the dandelion shirt sold his cichlids to merchants and made money. However, the red snapper that assaulted him got the final laugh: merchants and their customers got salmonella, and because most of them were nonmblan*, the fisherman lost to their ruthless request for retribution. As he wanted, the fisherman in the crimson vest sold his cichlids and earned money for his family: food on the table, clothes for the children, and a nicer house on the hills. Unfortunately, a week after the move, a landslide buried their home. With nothing left, the fisherman and his wife sent their children to a relative overseas. As he jinxed nothing, the fishermen’s friend in the crimson shirt lived an uneventful life. The fisherman in the emerald vest sold his cichlids and went back home. He thanked Agwé with a tribute of dirikwit** and a bottle of siwokann***, his only luxury. Unlike his first friend, salmonella did not attack his customers. Unlike his second friend, his sturdy shack stood firmly against the landslide. Unlike his last friend, his life continued fulfilled and eventful. Bigger cichlids flopped in his net. His shack was rebuilt into a fish shop. When he retired, his son turned the fish shop into a fish-themed restaurant. Decades after the fisherman had died, his descendants were running a chain of fish-themed restaurants in four different countries… After watching over them, his soul met with Agwé, who had set up a feast with every tribute the fisherman had offered throughout his life. Celine Krempp *white man ** cooked rice *** cane syrup Celine Krempp Celine is a French-American with her paternal family from the Northeast side of France. Working part-time as an art museum security guard inspires Celine in her ekphrastic writing. She is new to the The Ekphrastic Review, having written Her Final Performance. When she’s not brainstorming her next creative project, she walks her dog VanGogh, reads books, indulges in sweet cravings, and binge-watches adult animation and Tanked on streaming services. Celine is constantly jotting down ideas for short form writing inspired by her emotions, personal and professional experiences. Many people, including her therapist and colleagues, have described her work as "a relatable commentary." ** The Catch “Aha I caught fish!” The woman said with a gleam. “That’s not a catch in my philosophy” Said the man in yellow with a resemblance to her likeness, Gene “Ugh I haven’t caught any all day, I’m gonna scream.” Said the man in the vest of turtle shaded green. “If you do that you’ll scare the fish all the way to that man fishing downstream.” Said the man in the vest with the red sheen. “Not a catch? Why don’t you support me, are you so heartless?” She said with her eyes starting to drip like a faucet. “That’s not true, for you I go fishing everyday to raise money for your market. You found that fish on dry land, after a bird dropped it.” The man in green said “There is another reason I’m upset, If I don’t catch enough fish I won’t be able to feed my wounded Egret.” His friend in red said “Take a deep breath and don’t fret, There are plenty of fish in our orbit.” Ryan Steremberg Ryan Steremberg is a recent graduate of Muhlenberg College, having spent half of the past two years studying in Copenhagen, Denmark. Writing since 2018, his work comprises of poetry, short plays, and short fiction. His work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review. ** Oh, How They’d Row Oh, how they’d row for their lives. For a catch to fill many a deep, empty basket Before the waves would grow And swell in the throes of an arctic day Oh, how they’d row for their lives. And sing old sea shanty songs of the day. When their sails blew and sailed them away And they all came back with lots more to say. A tale of a killer whale and a headless mermaid And a gull that wasn’t too nimble or strong And fell from the sky their way And their fishing was gold that day. Oh, how they’d row for their lives. And laughed when the winds blew wild Dreaming of a fresh hot lobster bisque A blue crayfish dish, back at home – what bliss. Oh, how they’d row for their lives. And sing to the hissing of the waves. Remembering not so long ago… Another boat’s grave, not so lucky as they Still heard moaning in the gulleys and the caves. A tale of a ghostly crew capsized in the harbour Oh, how they’d row and cast off their fears, their chains. And count all the blessings of their days. And every good catch in fair weather or foul. Sending them home to a waiting lover, wearied in the night Gazing up at the moon. 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. ** The Fishing Party The clouds are tinged with the scent of ochre and vermilion. The afternoon is just born. The ocean is a snow-white foam of abundance. Three fishermen set out in a coracle shaped like a giant fish - no gills or silver scales, not breathing, but a magnet for the ones alive. The flying fish seek shelter in the salt of the breeze. Salmon and catfish frolic in the shadow of deception. Tadpoles gush to touch the face of the bubbling water. The minnows tangle in the underwater net of swirl and splash. A fourth fisherman perches on the precipice, waiting to be invited by the cobalt blue safety of distance. At the bottom of the ocean bed, below the clear waters, coloured pebbles glisten like jewelled rocks. Preeth Ganapathy Preeth Ganapathy is from Bengaluru, India. Her works have been published in several magazines, more recently, in Pensive, Braided Way, The Orchard Poetry Journal and elsewhere. Her microchaps A Single Moment, Purple, and Birds of the Sky, have been published by Origami Poems Project. Her work has been nominated for Best Spiritual Literature. ** The Boat We are the tiny wooden boat, born of will and hope that carries dreams across the restless waters of life. Each stroke of the oar is a silent prayer Each drift is a testament to resilience The sea, a canvas of chaos and calm, mirrors our internal storms and struggles. And we then feel the urge the urge to move, to seek, to find refuge, even when the currents almost pull us under. We discover that survival is an act of faith. A delicate balance between the act of letting go and holding on to what helps keep us afloat. Nivedita Karthik Nivedita Karthik is a graduate in Immunology from the University of Oxford and a professional Bharatanatyam dancer. Her poems have appeared in many national and international online and print magazines and anthologies. She has two poetry books to her credit (She: The Reality of Womanhood and Pa(i)red Poetry). Her profile showcasing her use of poetry was recently featured in Lifestyle Magazine. ** To Hector Hyppolite Regarding Fishermen You nurtured souls as cleric first retiring to become immersed in art you made from meager means, your feathers brushing local scenes in oil on cardboard to sustain the call to greater reach and reign as patriarch of Haitian lore unleashed to bear forevermore its testament to faith profound that resonates while storms resound with stern resolve to fate endured as destiny to which inured on land that breaks the sea alone and wakes to harvest never sown. 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. ** A Sacred Act The echo of church bells dispersed from a hill, the sky vespered in birds, the blue circling of swallows -- and I know I'm in flight, lifting from the scene of one page to the next, delving into the song of those who carry the fishermen's saint. Her torso draped in a white net, adorned with prayer beads and red flowers. Their Stella Maris who blesses the village; the men who sail at dawn and return at dusk, smelling of bass with paint --peeling boats, (the ruin of brine) while some saint of reading blesses me, often igniting my senses in a procession from book to book. And like votive candles, they burn through an endless night or the rain -- washed hours of an afternoon. Somehow she always sends me to the most significant work. Her presence cast over the chapters, illuminating the script as if it were a mullioned window letting in what's ever meant to be seen or inferred. A sense of divine intervention, a silence that floats inside our mind and knows the miracle of sharing thoughts and feeding the hungry with words. Their fish and loaves of bread. Wendy A. Howe Author's note: Stella Maris refers to The Virgin Mary and is translated from the Latin as "Star of the sea". In many fishing villages and ports, She is regarded as the guiding star that helps fishermen navigate the sea while keeping them safe and blessed with the possibility of a good day's catch. Wendy Howe is an English teacher who lives in Southern California. Her work is deeply influenced by diverse cultures, history, myth and women's issues. She often refers to her poetic self as a shape-shifter who assumes various roles that explore the circumstances of different situations or landscapes. Over the years, she has appeared in a number of journals including: Liminality, Silver Blade, Eye To The Telescope, Strange Horizons, Mirror Dance, Carmina Magazine, The Winged Moon, Crows and Cross Keys and many others. ** The Smiling Man A smiling man held out his hand. He called to fishers three: “Take me aboard and let us row across the foaming sea.” Said they, “We fish for pwason woz, for working men are we: We cast our nets to feed our kin who live beside the sea.” Then spoke again that smiling man, and full of joy was he: “The catch that’s waiting for you here is all humanity. Come cast, come cast, and fill your nets with souls that would be free, And you’ll be fed on sweeter fish than swim in any sea.” “Mèt mwen, mèt mwen,” the fishers sighed, “We’re far from Galilee: Ayisyen men like us may fish in never a white man’s sea.” “Frè m yo, frè m yo” he answered them, “believe in me, tan prie, And all you catch will pray for you to my papa and me.” Ruth S. Baker Author's note: Haitian Creole words: pwason woz - fish popular with Haitian fishermen; "mèt mwen" - "my lord"; "frè m yo" - "my brothers"]. Ruth S Baker has published in some online magazines, including The Ekphrastic Review. ** From Land I stand at a distance, never boarding the boat, nor testing the waters. Even when the sea-bound beckon, something holds me rooted where I leave nothing changed. Spray freckles my face as I feel wind tug my clothes like a compass toward the relentless waves; everything seems to whisper follow, follow—but I refrain. The boat drifts as a fish flashing the colour of power arcs through the air; an intrusive offering. And yet I reach, toes brushing the shores’ edge as my fingers brush the gills; so slight so heavy I release. The water reclaims it, and the current carries on. Emily Anne Rose Emily Anne Rose (she/her) lives and writes in Los Angeles. ** Caught by the Sea Caught by the sea, Haitian we sing Bought from a shared history Trapped among mountain shakes and storms Locked between boats and sanded shores Bound to hull shapes of misery Survived through conquest’s injury Found revolution’s victory Saw the sore souls escaping war Caught by the sea As pale fish freed from fisheries We swam to unthought mysteries Swore not to forget anymore Never ignored but life restored As Haiti is eternally Caught by the sea 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.  An Urban Tree, by Suzy King (Australia) contemporary. Click on image for artist site. Dear Ekphrastic Writers,
Suzy King’s Urban Tree (2024) is the writing challenge you are facing the coming fortnight [pleasantly, naturally!]. I find her an amazing artist, with an observant eye, no matter whether it concerns buildings or waves or wires stretching out into the sky. Stretching out to you here is such a wooden power pole, and to quote Suzy: "I like looking up at those wooden poles and their squiggly wires. They are constant reminders of our growing appetite for energy and connectivity. Like trees, but with no leaves or shade, giving the birds somewhere to sit and look down at us. And looking at this one...you can see bees (at a stretch!).” Do check out Suzy’s website and Instagram, to admire art and to find more of her beautiful words: https://suzyking.com/ https://www.instagram.com/suzykingartist Looking forward to reading your writings, enjoy, 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 An Urban Tree, by Suzy King. Deadline is September 26, 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 KING CHALLENGE in the subject line. 6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight EST, SEPTEMBER 26, 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.  Eschatological, by Kitty North (United Kingdom) 2005-2023 Adjudication At the brink of dawn, Souls meet in contemplation Judgement awaits eight, battered with responsibility- infinite relief awaits the chosen No man is an island Orange dots the decorated soul Bleeding into the red of wealth and honour Eight is Orange and yellow Is there honour in this life? 18 years but is my soul complete? The blood of 18 years, embellished with wealth. Now I stand for the final ritual, marked for tragedy. Tragedy as beautiful as the sand my feet settle in, as beautiful as the 7 that surround me. The 7th day marked completion. What is the 8th if not the first day of enjoyment? May a soul rest in the garden of Eden as the others have been used to build it. This is karmic balance. What awaits me on the other side breath and air or nothingness? All is foreign to me the now the later orange, blooming In forever, against the cold collage of blue, a rhapsody of mourning. How divine is this? The moist air plays a cold instrumental song in my ears. I’m not sure if I can cleanse myself with the water that surrounds me, either way this wont save me. I am complete. Scatological degrees of sadness bloom like oranges in the desert of mourning. The 1965 The 1965 is a collaboration between your poetry Jahzara Zamora Woods and Debbie Walker Lass. We met at an open mic poetry group in Avondale Estates, Georgia and decided to begin collaborating together. Jahzara is 19 years old and Debbie is not! We hope to continue producing poetry together, this is our first submission. ** Home, Everlasting But one, all paintings great and small, the creatures of a Yorkshire lass, inspired by people, with their place, land scape etched deeply on her soul. Imposing, but inviting too, both powerful yet intimate, translating elements to paint; here’s death and judgement, afterlife - ’twixt Bolton Abbey Priory and Arncliffe Barn, web gallery. Where else for her, such Kitty wake, distinctive call where all complete? In her beginning is her end, an eschatology well framed. Yes, weaker sun and icy hue, few people skating past their last, on tarn maybe, their common plot, accented shades in dialect - whatever temperature of hell, whatever furniture of heaven. One born, so wedded to her land, a pilgrim painter grounded so, her only quest, remaining home, forever where she’s called to be. 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 ** What Comes Next Will we find ourselves in an alien place No Styx, no ferryman, no gates of Hell Or Heaven for that matter, no welcome Just here, upon some insubstantial raft In a maelstrom, awaiting uncertain fate Feeling the deep swell, sensing that pull A group, just this moment’s contingent With others’ blank stares and confusion Confirming that none really understand And that this is beyond comprehension Yet slowly, all probably come to realise That nobody ever did have any answer Despite many having asked the question And heard that same deafening silence Howard Osborne Howard is a UK citizen, retired. Published author of non-fiction reference book, scientific papers and poetry. Interests mainly creative writing (poetry, novel, short stories, songs and scripts), music and travel. ** Kaleidoscope Day The sky is turquoise disbelief -- a snow day sky, when the world pauses just long enough to feel new again. I’m eight years old again, no school, just cold cheeks and the glitter of maybe. Light doesn’t just arrive-- it dances, fractures, shatters my heart into kaleidoscopic prisms. I don’t mind the breakage. I need the colour. This painting holds me like breath before laughter, like the silence before someone says yes. There’s innocence here-- not the naive kind, but the kind that survives. The turquoise sky is a songbird mid-flight, a hope I can eye-gaze into until I become it. And oh—those curves and swirls-- they pull me forward and backward, like time’s secret fingerprint. I don’t walk through the scene, I’m swept into it-- a soft spiral, a tilt of gravity, where everything is real and nothing needs explaining. There—eight shadow-figures walking the light-streaked shore. They could be anyone. My grandparents. My children’s children. Souls between the tides. Timeless, still moving. Gabrielle Munslow Gabrielle Munslow is a poet, NHS mental health nurse, and lyrical Firestarter from West Sussex. Her work blends grief, grit, and glitter, often in the same breath. She’s been published in Neon Origami and finds beauty in both breakdown and breakthrough. ** Smudges of Coal for This Eschaton We are but smudges of coal for this eschaton Formed in the mines of time Heaped and heat soaked Over a million years of patience refined Our essence is compressed and crushed Under tons of pasts deposited onto our sum Emanated energy from eternal trust Our being begged beyond the crust Once dug and arrived as creation We burned our backs in the sun For a few quick decades exchanged In a shoveling of intermittent experiences Our fuel spent on escaping ourselves While life deteriorated our bodies Ground and sanded against clay-stained pain Then strewn onto earth's salted plains Leaving us smeared In a slurry of oils and dry dust disappeared Our remains evaporated from the outside in And our efforts dissipated for distribution In buckets of ash flake residue Changed never to return as before But transformed into the complexity And recycled to fossils for storage Long formed in the depths of earth for a while And short scorched by eternal fire We are but smudges of coal for this eschaton Waiting for the next, last one 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. ** Eschatology at Gaping Gill “He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog.” (Psalms 40:2-3, ESV) Water tumbles from a seam of blue light 100 metres above the chamber floor You winch me up through falling streams Into a misty cerulean landscape How I wish to ease my pangs inside limestone walls To sip a proper brew beneath a stone slate roof But buildings I love have faded from view Leaving an orange glow to warm the terrain My ancestors have gathered in the Dales Beneath a cadmium yellow sun They call to me with ancient songs Beckoning me to life beyond the living And so I go To Pen-y-ghent To Ingleborough To Whernside Wandering higher and higher Into the bright and beautiful sky Lara Dolphin A descendant of immigrants, Lara Dolphin lives with her family among the Allegheny Mountains of Central Pennsylvania on the ancestral land of the Susquehannock/Iroquois people. She has written three chapbooks In Search Of The Wondrous Whole, Chronicle Of Lost Moments, and At Last a Valley. She, like countless others, hopes for a world filled with greater peace. ** Returning River valley revival A heavenly backdrop of rolling hills And cloudless sunlit skies Awash in a captivating frosty windswept wintry blue With faith that the ice is thick enough The invocational assembly of warmly dressed folks on the frozen waterway Ice skates tightly laced and tied Skillfully balanced on metal runners Pushing off on one foot, then the other, again and again Gliding effortlessly, piercing the wind Returning everyday to the frozen valley Skaters fellowship on the ice Until Mother Nature’s freezer succumbs to its melting point Not a death But a molecular conversion by the increasingly warming sun A transition to its liquid state, then to vapor clouds then to rain And in the coldest season, returning the landscape and the waterway to a captivating frosty windswept wintry blue Queen Hodge Henrietta Hodge is a Boston native who has resided in the Jamaica Plain area for over 30 years. After earning a Bachelor of Science in Biotechnology from Northeastern University, Henrietta embarked on what is now a 49-year career as a Medical Technologist in a major Boston hospital. Henrietta, affectionately known as "Queen," found her passion when introduced to poetry in grammar school. Previously one of her poems was published by the National Library of Poetry. Recently, Henrietta’s poem “God Bless America” was featured at the Roslindale Branch of the Boston Public Library. She continues to write, and she reads her poetry in high schools, colleges and other venues. ** The Sage, the Book, and the Elements of Light We have been troubled by our inner selves, Tormented by the night, Trailed by the tendrils of darkness, Wrestled with the unseen. A sage advised us to journey to a distant place. The book tells us we will travel across seven rivers. The forest whispers mysteries into our ears, The elements of light guide us. We encourage one another, Sing songs of redemption, Speak to our weary minds, And strengthen our dwindling hope. The sky appears different as we cross the seventh sea. The sun emerges from its hiding, And we see a hill in the distance, Encircled by the colours of the rainbow. Thompson Emate Thompson Emate spends his leisure time on creative writing, particularly poetry and prose. He has a deep love for nature and the arts. His work can be seen in Poetry Potion, Poetry Soup, Writer Space African magazine, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Borderless Journal, Written Tales magazine, Spillwords and elsewhere. He lives in Lagos, Nigeria. ** Eschatological Eschatological—relating to Solemnities of death and judgement—can Communicate no feel for what is true Hereafter: it's devoid of context, an Abstraction, just a soulless word. But art Transmits the feel. If, after shipwreck and On foreign soil, you're ready to restart Life, after almost losing hope you'd land On solid ground, you have no purpose for Grand words on final destiny—you are In your hereafter now. You don't fear more Catastrophe: you faced down death. Your star Ascends. Your sky is blue. Your morning sun Lights up your dawn. Hereafter has begun. Mike Mesterton-Gibbons Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His acrostic sonnets and other poems have appeared in Current Conservation, The Ekphrastic Review, Light, Lighten Up Online, the New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, WestWard Quarterly and several other journals. ** Shadows Walking heavily towards the ocean waves The shadows of these elderly men and women Are weakly enlightened by their old body Like a tired guide Their shadow traces their path to the ocean Tracing before them The road of their resilience Shadows shaped by countless obstacles Encountered in their life A faint light that had shone In their youth Proud and bold Once these old people Fearlessly braved Challenges and Ocean waves That shaped their minds And opened their heart Now it is time to rest Their shadow fades dramatically Their body couldn't keep up with it Too weak But proud and grateful For all it gave them These old people no longer see Their shadow in front of them Turning around to look If it were behind They couldn’t be able to see it either Because it was already within them Bearing their old body And the weight of their efforts They return to the ocean Cradle of their shadows Jean Bourque Jean lives in Montreal. His first language is French. He is learning English. ** Senryu humankind pollutes the land deteriorates and oceans conquer K. J. Watson K. J. Watson’s poems and stories have appeared on the radio; in magazines, comics and anthologies; and online. ** The Tide We waited on the foreshore to see the tide come in. Not in any sense of supplication, but in expectation that supplicants would not leave dissatisfied. Some of us knew exactly what we wanted. We knew how to ask the right questions. Others were more open and simply wanted the slate to be swept clean There was a party atmosphere as the waves receded and the dry sand beckoned us to dance. Fish, suddenly out of place, flopped and died around us. And still the tide went out. Acres long lost to sight, were bared mud and drying seaweed. We chased the water to the edge, paused when the water paused and leaped at us, pounced at us, swept us up in an ecstasy of rush. Those standing in the favoured spots went first. The dancers furthest up the shore stood and stared, or began to run. The tide came in and still came in, beyond any expectation. We had waited for the tide to turn, and not in vain. It turned and swept the world away from end to end. Edward Alport Edward Alport is a retired teacher and international business executive living in the UK. He occupies his time as a poet, gardener and writer. He has had poetry, articles and stories published in various webzines and magazines and performed on BBC Radio and Edinburgh Fringe. His Bluesky handle is @crossmouse.bsky.social. His website is crossmouse.wordpress.com ** To Kitty North Regarding Eschatological So many are the destinies -- of those who are no more -- beginnings having endings that would never come they swore, yet now are told by vestiges awakening surprise as troves of curiosities that mystify demise. You render seeming classic theme so bluntly being blurred as inundation imminent of dream to be obscured, and yet decide to pause it just before the truth prevails where consequence so long uncertain clarifies details. The way we see this image therefore measures who we are and whether we'll have risen to our legacy as bar, and whether we'll have raised it by the remnants of a soul that others find or recollect to harbor and extol as proof that virtue fashioned from the fear in our embrace was faith that did not falter as our living, saving grace. 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. ** When the Apocalypse Arrives It is Brought by the Waves, Not the City Skyscrapers' Falling Masonry A howling wind - strange in a cloudless sky - buffets us with sea spume. Some of my companions are almost being lifted. Everyone's lost their briefcases, purses or manbags. One minute we were all walking towards the train station, the next we were by the sea. There were no warnings of earthquakes this morning, no tsunami alerts. When the big wave came it was worthy of Hokusai, a silent killer rolling inexorably through the city. I half-remembered Maggie, my meteorologist friend from college, telling stories about how the earth could open up, everyone thrown in the air. Like flying up to heaven, she'd said. At this latitude on a known fault line it could happen anytime. I never considered it would be leaving work one Thursday, a boring meh kind of day achieving little, bashing out documents I knew no-one would ever read. Maggie had made tectonic plate movements sound dramatic and exciting, with volcanoes making seas look like blood. Here, with the other suits, and a child in school uniform, everything seemed spectral, dreamy, unreal. It could have been a summer's day seaside scene, but this ghostly coastline was eerie. Are we the only ones left? Everyone else looks just as bemused as me. Alongside the not unpleasant strong warm wind's sound there's a continuous whine like a high-pitched keening. Ah, now I see it. The blue rock I'd assumed was a small island. That's where the sound is coming from. It's rising. So this is part of it. I gulp and yet I feel relaxed. I lean back, jacket arms flapping loosely like wings. I wait for the strengthening gale to pick me up. So be it. Emily Tee Emily Tee is a writer living in the UK Midlands. She's had pieces published in response to The Ekphrastic Review challenges previously, and elsewhere online and in print, including most recently in The Poetry Lighthouse and Gypsophila Zine. ** Final Exams Fighting cold sweats on my daybed at the hostel, I’m afraid one morning I might wake up dead. Pointing my 9 millimeter generally in the direction of my head, I think I’ll be hard to miss. Sneaking up to the door to see if the coast is clear, I glance outside: a failing sun; a swirling blue sky; faded brown farms; and little people making last ditch efforts. Tiptoeing back inside to hide, I nearly about specifically ended me for good. Just before I killed me, I found a little of that thing I call a self. It probably ain’t much, and I might lose it still if I go back to cooking up one last gasp at fame. No, I may not be living the truth, but now I’m betting that it’s more than a little junior varsity game. I guess it’s not going to be perfect, but imperfect is about all I got. Bob Olive Bob Olive is a retired pastor, college instructor, youth agency administrator and writer, having been published in The Louisville Review. He practices TaiChi and fly fishing occasionally and also pretends to lift weights once a week. He is happily retired and hides out in the sweet sunny south in Louisville, KY. He is pleased that no one has yet discovered that way down deep inside, he is very shallow. Occasionally his interest in synthesizing ideas results in disjointed haikus that highlight misaligned discrepancies emanating from the fingerprints of light. ** The Apocalypse The solitary sun obscures the narrow strip of existence, its unfamiliar boundaries. The mineral gleam of the cerulean sky fades. The blue waves, the lost sparkle of ebb and flow - a deluge of thoughts without the moisture of breath, outside the region of presence. Men and women - wandering bones without shadows, memory without names, runaway thoughts, walk to the shore. The fittest definitely survive, but like everywhere else, there are exceptions. The outlying seconds advance - silent sharks seeking a slice of time. The ocean of life imposes its impalpable tide of death. Aqua whirlwinds rumble into a formless dizziness. Preeth Ganapathy Preeth Ganapathy is from Bengaluru, India. Her works have been published in several magazines, more recently, in Pensive, Braided Way, The Orchard Poetry Journal and elsewhere. Her microchaps A Single Moment, Purple and Birds of the Sky have been published by Origami Poems Project. Her work has been nominated for Best Spiritual Literature. ** The Day the Sky Swirled The men declared the End of Days. They told the women to stay indoors, stay safe. While they, the men, ventured outside, assessed the sky, conducted a meeting. Devised a plan of action. The women acquiesced and remained inside as instructed, shuttering windows and bolting doors. For safety’s sake. Thousands of frogs, unsure why the women had summoned them but nonetheless feeling ravenous, looked down from the heavens and saw the specks below. Bugs? Yum. As the amphibians rained down, tumbling toward the ground through swirling skies, the specks below grew larger, taking the shapes of men. But it’s amazing what collective action can achieve. Tracy Royce Tracy Royce is a writer and poet whose words appear in Bending Genres, Does It Have Pockets?, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Villain Era, and elsewhere. She lives in Southern California where she enjoys hiking, playing board games, and obsessing over Richard Widmark movies. Find her on Bluesky. ** Eschatalogical The few of us who are left go blindly into the unknown - into the blue of parting waters or tsunami we do not know. The world kaleidoscopes as the sun blares down leaving us feeling small the few of us who are left. Juliet Wilson Juliet Wilson is an adult education tutor, wildlife surveyor and conservation volunteer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her poetry and short stories have been widely published. She can be found in various online places as Crafty Green Poet. Her Substack is https://craftygreenpoet.substack.com/ ** The Last Things As I lay dying after such a little death together I wrote these sparing words less strong than gossamer. When one at last arrives in paradise, will we find that there is nothing there? No one there at all? What will my body be burned and covered in dirt for that last long night like every night now? Hold me, I'm cold, hold me, I'm vanishing before my eyes. I chase the calendar pages none of us can catch. Loneliness is never born and never dies. It just is. I am the last of my house outliving friends and lovers. The sorrows we carried together never really happened, perhaps, and if they did, whatever they meant was left unknown. We live for this brief day in the calculated clicks of time, while the stars, eternal stars blink out forever. Hold me. I am holding no one. The air overhead is vacant and lifeless. And my writing is a toy against judgment. The galaxies smile, and the stars smile with what I can never know. It will come to me but I will not be here. Royal Rhodes Royal Rhodes is a poet who lives in a small village in the heart of Ohio. His poems have appeared in Ekphrastic Review and Challenges, Spirit Fire, 7th Circle Pyrite, and The Montreal Review. ** eddying Into the back of the mind and out again—a whisper of something—a dream, perhaps, or did it have more substance? -- too quickly the wave passes by, moving toward the farther shore -- the one beyond the horizon, the one we can only imagine but never reach, the one that eludes us when we try to remember where we intended to go, who we intended to be 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/. ** Eros at the End: a Meditation on Last Things “Love is the final end of the universe, the Amen of creation.” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin I. Stars Sing a psalm to the stars: billions upon billions, freckles on the galaxy’s milky body. Lovers with come-hither eyes, laughing, gossiping, beckoning us into a dance. Sing to the stars. Sing to the freckles. Dance with me. II. Planets These stars have planets too, fruit in their orchards, children circling fires. Some grow tyrants, cockroaches, dinosaurs with teeth like gods. Some are silent as cathedrals. Still sing of them. Still, we sing. III. Galaxies Two trillion galaxies: my little brain reels on the zeros. Whirlpools of spilled milk, cities of light. They flirt, they collide, they devour, they embrace. New stars are born in the wounding of their touch. Sing of galaxies. Dance with me. IV. Creator Sing of the spherical, a potter at his wheel, sweat shining, clay flying. Bowls fired, bowls shattered, a creator giddy with wine hurls the stars against the wall. Even the broken pieces glitter. Sing the shards. Dance with me. V. Oort Cloud Our womb is a frozen halo, mountains of ice, teeth of stone. Love letters in bottles, unopened, circling the dark. Do they guard us, or forget us? No matter. Still, we sing. VI. Death of the Sun When the Sun runs out of breath, Venus and Mercury consumed, Earth’s oceans boiling like cauldrons abandoned at a feast: let this psalm not terrify, but reform us. Love more. Surrender the petty. Rise up, take hands, and dance with me. VII. The Faithful Will our children’s children’s children sail into another galaxy, icons lashed to their ships, visions etched into their skin like tattoos? May they take my tenderness, my laughter, my ache. May they carry me like a flame in their hearts. VIII. Heaven and Hell Eventually, the music stops. Silence upon silence. No Last Judgment. No Hell. Only ballrooms of ice. Perhaps a Heaven of consciousness. Perhaps love. Sing the silence. Dance with me. IX. Particular Judgment I will be gone, my aches, my fears, my tenderness, my wounds, my mercies rising, curling like smoke. Perhaps the Big Freeze is the universe’s last orgasm, too long to endure. Who can say? Mystery itself is praise. X. Hope Until then, can we hang together? Be the band still playing as the universe drifts into silence? Chosen family. Lovers. Beloveds. The tribe of kindness. Until then, sing. XI. Sacraments Spray paint collapsing walls with our names. Write poems on grocery receipts, crayon mandalas on children’s homework. Cradle babies in blankets of joy. Birth art and laughter. Share ripe peaches, clean water. Stop wars. Lay down the bombs. Baptize the world with laughter. Absolve lovers with kisses more sacred than holy oil. XII. Last Judgment When hydrogen is gone, when silence folds the world, let our song echo, beyond words, beyond Judgment itself. Only this remains: maybe love. Maybe love. Maybe love. Stevie B. Stevie B. (Stephen McDonnell) has spent all his life in mystical--and later, erotic—adventures, wandering the wilds of the soul and serving as a wounded healer: part priest, part activist, part therapist, part trickster. In his sixties, he began shaping the prose of his journey into lyric poetry. He has been learning the craft from Rumi, Whitman, O’Hara, Ginsberg and Anne Carson—and the great, mysterious in-between. He lives in an anchor-hold with windows in every room, where he watches the wide-open sky above the farmlands of eastern Long Island, New York. ** The New Messiah The portal would only remain open for a few moments. The Skaters slid into the valley and harvested the precious ice for safekeeping with their fork, calking, and breaking bars. The strongest among them used walking plows. Ice cutters followed. But Saskia, of the House of David, remained transfixed by the aura of tangerine, lemon, and watermelon. The fruits themselves were no longer available, because of the lack of refrigerated storage. The sun dripped lower in the sky. The moment would soon disappear. The Skaters would never be able to scrape enough ice for the larders or the people. There was only one solution. Saskia poised her collection stick for her one last shot. Barbara Krasner Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks, including the recent ekphrastic poetry chapbook Poems of the Winter Palace (Bottlecap Press), and the forthcoming ekphrastic collection The Night Watch (Kelsay Books). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in more than seventy literary journals, including Tupelo Quarterly, Cimarron Review, Nimrod, and The Ekphrastic Review. A multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, she lives and teaches in New Jersey. Visit her website at www.barbarakrasner.com. ** Sacrosanct Haiku Free souls reach sea nine Waves swing them to apeiros* Why’s there sound of splash? Ekaterina Dukas *Apeiros (Gr.) - infinity Ekaterina Dukas writes poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning and is a frequent guest in TER challenges. ** 3 am she is surfing again skimming waves for likes to post on her insta fishing for soothing emojis and hearts she clutches her phone her lifeboat buoyant in choppy times the screen a sun strobing her eyes and the waters rise an ocean of doubt flooding her mind a balance board poised on the crest and she breaks she is white froth lost in seas of cobalt below trolls swirl burst shallows to surface Kate Young Kate Young lives in England and enjoys writing poetry, painting and playing the guitar, ukulele and mandolin. Her poems have appeared in various webzines, magazines, and chapbooks. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlets A Spark in the Darkness and Beyond theSchool Gate have been published by Hedgehog Press. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet or on her website kateyoungpoet.co.uk ** … moot at the end of the world … More energy than they have felt in centuries of their loss it sweeps in wind-driven currents pushing the ocean into banks of indigo royal and purple creating the crater to which their order is drawn in a parting of the blue sea that they are dead is immutable their forms already transmuted voices mute until their presence requested to the moot on golden coloured sand of a seabed cleared to allow their passage— these ghosts of ocean tragedy: some draped in warfare tatters others scarred skins like yellow seals all affected by titanic forces that left them for dead— these ghosts of end of their world events come early: their second coming precipitated by this conjunction of swirling current that parts the sea storming wind that raises waves to high blue peaks below which, becalmed for a moment in their history a time of mystery, these spirits of the sea confer not of regret or cost but of their loss of being a consequence of their life with the sea before closure again sets them apart beneath once more making the golden orb a watery sun of a distant age Peter Longden Peter Longden: “My passion for writing poetry began over 25 years ago when I found it as my way to record how I see the world and what makes it the way it is. I am married to Sally with two grown-up boys (and a granddaughter). Recently, an ekphrastic poem was published in The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press Newsletter. Another of my poems was shortlisted for the International O'Bheal Five Words Poetry Competition; others have been published in local anthologies. I have taken part in NaPoWriMo over the past six years, recently based on my travels in Buenos Aires, Aruba and the Eiger, Switzerland.” ** Mother Earth's Demise My time is nigh I can feel it in my oceans they are so hot and salty and in my mountain ridges so full of aches and fissures Don't get me started on hot flashes the melting of my polar regions Or how the sapiens have fructified beyond imagining How they have destroyed my Amazon lungs in the name of beefy big mac WHERE DID I GO WRONG AS A MOTHER? Were the forest fires and torrential rains not enough tough love TO STOP THE DRILLING? Donna-Lee Smith DLS writes from an off-grid cabin in the Laurentians mountains, north of Montreal, where she witnesses shrinking forests and diminishing wildlife. ** Hokusai, Van Gogh, Chagall, Heisenberg, Einstein, Sartre and Pelagius Go Surfing With St. Augustine having waved goodby to tradition and their arguments -- Oaths give way to exclamations as they ask where's Nietzsche today? Each caught up in rapture that goes on forever. dan smith dan smith is the author of Crooked River and The Liquid of Her Skin, the Suns of Her Eyes. He has had poems in The Rhysling Anthology, Dwarf Stars, Scifaikuest, Deep Cleveland Junk Mail Oracle, Gas Station Famous, Jerry Jazz Musician and Sein und Werden. Nominated for the 2025 Pushcart Prize, his most recent poems have been at Five Fleas Itchy Poetry, dadakuku, Under the Basho, Sonic Boom, Lothlorien Poetry Journal andEkphrastic Review Challenge. ** Dawn after the Storm: 26th September, 1588 In place of its usual scatter of cockle and oyster shells; mermaid’s purses; and bladderwrack fronds, Streedagh strand heaved with bodies off the scuppered Armada vessels: La Livia, Santa Maria De Vision, and La Juliana. Rasps and groans from living lungs drowned out the cries of herring gulls. Irish tenant farmers stirred awake in their cottages on the hill, shivering with the wind blowing in through holes in the thatch. While in the dunes, amongst the bedraggled grasses, the Redcoats cocked their muskets, taking aim at any men still struggling on the sand. Bayveen O’Connell Bayveen O'Connell is an Irish writer who loves the medium of Flash Fiction. Her stories have been nominated for Best Microfiction and the Pushcart Prize. She's inspired by myth, folklore, art, travel, and history. ** Infinity "He passed the stages of his youth Entering the whirlpool,,," The Wasteland, T.S. Eliot Hier, my dear, I loved you in Infinity our bodies twinned as two strong strands of handmade rope coiled and uncoiled, the way 2 moon-drenched serpents seem to copulate -- the way they mate -- to propagate, real and alchemical their shape a magic symbol topped by silver wings -- Hermes's wand, called by doctors the Caduceus. Would I heal if you called my dog Apollo and raced to find me where the grains of sand were fine- tuned by the sun, the beach when we were running to our future? & would we miss the boat where Tarot figures waved to warn us we were running out of time on a card that meant we'd been stopped-lines in a painting where we, eight in number, raced together to an un- certain center? There, waves of color washed up, thin ties to capture clouds when it was dawn or sunset, light changing on the Cote D'Azur the spirit of the Impressionists gentling color to pastels -- but O! those shards of wind, circling, circling until we, drawn into the inevitable, struggled in the tentacles of all lost souls caught up, as we were, in dreams of spinning fashion -- those errant days Infinity was first in fashion. Laurie Newendorp Laurie Newendorp recovers as she writes in Houston. Honored many times by the Ekphrastic Review's Challenges, her poetry has appeared in Gulf Coast, Isotope and Analecta IX; her poem Forgive Us, honoring the victims of 911, was a runner-up for the Nimrod Neruda Prize. Apollo was the brother of the Greek god, Hermes (the Winged Mercury, messenger of the gods in the Roman pantheon.) Her poem Infinity begins with Yesterday, "Hier" in French. ** After Eschatological, by Kitty North Is it a tsunami striking down? our last vestige in shades of blues deep sea chroma waves curve to drown dark human dabs on pastel dunes-- the way it ends has led not to be in orange or red. Daniel W. Brown Daniel W. Brown is a retired special education teacher who began writing poetry as a senior. At age 72 he published his first collection Family Portraits In Verse and Other Illustrated Poems through Epigraph Books, Rhinebeck, NY. Daniel has been published in various journals and anthologies, including CAPS Calling All Poets 25th anniversary anthology and Kinds Of Cool, an anthology of jazz poetry. He has hosted a youtube channel Poetry From Shooks Pond and was included in Arts Mid-Hudson's Poets Respond To Art in 2022-23. Daniel writes each day about music, art and whatever else captures his imagination. ** Parousia one, two ready or not though I’ve counted to ten a hundred million times sun rusts to soot three, four run to the shore up hill, down dale, over the moon if required clouds bleed cobalt strive, spits all fiddlesticks but the north wind doth blow and big bad wolf smiles licking his lips seven, eight don’t be late, waves split and The Way lights up shadows slope off sidewards marks, get set, go Helen Freeman Helen Freeman lives in Edinburgh and loves Ekphrastic poetry. You can find some of her published poems on Instagram @chemchemi.hf. She’s interested in eschatology and wants to be ready! ** Why Should I Do That? Darkened spectres skate Memory’s thin horizon Blithe forgetfulness And reluctant forgiveness Crack loudly under our weight Rose Menyon Heflin Originally from rural, southern Kentucky, Rose Menyon Heflin is a poet, writer, and visual artist living in Wisconsin. Her award-winning poetry has been published over 250 times in outlets spanning five continents, and she has published memoir and flash fiction pieces. She has had a free verse poem choreographed and danced, an ekphrastic memoir piece featured in a museum art exhibit, and two haiku published in a gumball machine. Among other venues, her poetry has appeared in Deep South Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, and San Antonio Review. An OCD sufferer since childhood, she strongly prefers hugging trees instead of people. ** In Painterly Verse: 1 Peter 3:20-21 Amidst the tempest the wind churned surged in gusts of aqua scuds of seafoam and Prussian blue. After the flood above the biblical eight the sun cast its overhead projector whispered the hope of salvation in washes of yellow welcomed the fruit of the spirit in strokes of persimmon. As symbolism numerology and God would have it believers proclaimed New beginnings for Noah and his family redemption by way of water! Jeannie E. Roberts Jeannie E. Roberts is a poet, visual artist, and the author of nine books. Her latest poetry collection is On a Clear Night, I Can Hear My Body Sing (Kelsay Books, 2025). Her work appears in Amethyst Review, Blue Heron Review, The New Verse News, ONE ART, Panoply, Sky Island Journal, Verse-Virtual, and elsewhere. An award-winning artist and poet, she is a member of the League of Minnesota Poets and the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. She serves as a poetry editor for the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs and is an Eric Hoffer and a two-time Best of the Net award nominee. ** Souls We stare at the horizon near dawn and before crossing; linger in the low tide discarding our shadows and listening to the songstress -- her shoulders cloaked in dove feathers, her hair vaporous as fog backlit by the moon. She chants a prayer for the dead, a petition to be received all in a pitch that shatters sin and glass. We don't know the words yet the song seems familiar, a fountain coin's throw from Hebrew, Latin or Aramaic. It doesn't matter. It's about the rhythm, the resonance of breath; water rushing over rock, the sky clearing after a storm, a leaf quivering in the wind and the sun absolving its green of blight; and the sun gilding our shoulders (our un-grown wings) with trembling light as we hear her voice heighten dissolving into other voices, our voices and we sing -- the thaw of ice in a cavern, the trickle of grace on our tongues. Wendy A. Howe Wendy Howe is an English teacher and free lance writer who lives in Southern California. Her work is deeply influenced by diverse cultures, history, myth and women's issues. Over the years, she has appeared in a number of journals including: Liminality, Silver Blade, Eye to the Telescope, Strange Horizons, Songs Of Eretz, Carmina Magazine and Eternal Haunted Summer. Her most recent work will appear in The Otherworld Literary Journal later this autumn. ** Flight, Interrupted We watched oil fires burn the bright blue morning. Gray smoke funneled to the end, from the body in the bay, and the bodies, and the bay. We tasted poisons push through our nostrils and down our throats. Still, from land's end we had to look. What cross between Icarus and northern winds of Boreas brought them down, shards on scattered pyres? Turbulence sheared and dropped them, fragile as ash, to a small circumference of water. It seemed the sky itself could plummet, like the ancient tale's falling berry the jack rabbit heard, to cry catastrophe, or how we'd compress as if drowning, weighted the way we sometimes name the sky, like lead, until nightfall, when light lowers to the sun's noiseless tune, rehearsing our lie-down as weightless molecules. Lynn Axelrod Lynn Axelrod’s poetry has appeared in journals and outlets such as The Ekphrastic Review, California Quarterly, Orchards Poetry Journal, Sheila-Na-Gig; was featured in the San Francisco Chronicle; and is in the James Joyce Library Special Collections, University College, Dublin. She enjoys giving readings, especially those to which she is invited! Her chapbook Night Arrangements was described by Kirkus Reviews as “evocative and lushly detailed.” Lotus Earth on Fire (2024, Finishing Line Press) was praised by a poet-reviewer as “an unflinching witness to the hungry and the homeless, to floods, fires, and the untold injustices of man to man.” |
Challenges
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