Editor's Note:

We are over the moon to have our esteemed contributor Annaliese Jakimides as our guest editor this time, as well as showcasing her artwork as the ekphrastic challenge prompt.

We can't wait to see what Annaliese inspires in your words!

Lorette

Guest Editor's Note:
​
​I’m so looking forward to what words/stories Time-Molt, Tender offers all you ekphrastic writers. For I have come to know The Ekphrastic Review writers as extraordinary translators of images into words—be it poetry or prose or some combination or combinatoric (that’s a math thing, by the way; I love its sound/rhythm). To me, ekphrasis is a kind of magic. It’s thrilling to witness. And I’m eternally grateful that Lorette has created this world.
 
As a writer, it took me a while to accept that some things I’m carrying insist on being told visually—that I don’t have the words. My visual work is mixed media, and any number of materials might be employed. In this piece, I used all kinds of fiber, including dyed raw wool, plus feathers, teabags, leaves, coffee grounds, with acrylic and inks. I rarely use a brush. And I often look back and have absolutely no idea how I got there.
 
I’m honoured and moved to have been asked to both contribute a visual image and to review the challenge submissions. I’m so looking forward to hearing where this work takes you.
 
Annaliese Jakimides

Annaliese Jakimides writes prose and poetry in a closet in her apartment in Bangor, Maine, after living for many years on a dirt road in the woods near Mt. Katahdin. A finalist for both regional and national awards, her work has been nominated for a Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Her most recent publications include “The Long Marriage” in The Ekphrastic Review and “I Tell Henry the Plate Is Red” in Breaking Bread: Essays from New England on Food, Hunger, and Family (Beacon Press).

**

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 Time-Molt, Tender, by Annaliese Jakimides. Deadline is October 14, 2022.

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. Helping the editor share the time and expenses involved is very much appreciated. There is an easy button to click above to share a five spot through PayPal or credit card. If you would like to give more, you can do so here. Thank you. A voluntary gift does  not affect the selection process in any way.

​4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.

Send your work to ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry.

5.Include JAKIMIDES 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. Do not send it after acceptance or later; it will not be added to your piece. Guest editors may not be familiar with your bio or have access to archives. We are sorry about these technicalities, but have found that following up, requesting, adding, and changing later takes too much time and is very confusing. 

7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 

8. Deadline is midnight EST, October 14, 2022.

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 will no longer send out sorry notices or yes letters. 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.

​For the Readers and the Writers Who Shared Their Words,
 
It was with great pleasure that I read and reflected on the wide variety of submissions in response to Jo Zider’s art. Thank you to the writers who shared their creativity with me. I honour each and every one of their creations. But as guest editor, my challenge was to choose from among them. 
 
I have selected fourteen different perspectives, different ways of experiencing Nature’s Way.

As you read them, I hope you will come away with an enlarged vision of this enigmatic piece of art. Jo has also been deeply moved by the depth of your words.
 
Sandi Stromberg
 
 
**

Three Haikus
 
opaque light
repeated questions
of a screeching owl
 
bio markers
branches paint
a stark sky
 
liquid mirage
bathed in shadows
anti sun
 
Kashiana Singh
 
When Kashiana Singh is not writing, she lives to embody her TEDx talk theme of Work as Worship into her every day. She currently serves as Managing Editor for Poets Reading the News. Her chapbook Crushed Anthills by Yavanika Press is a journey through 10 cities. Her newest full-length collection, Woman by the Door has just been released in February 2022 with Apprentice House Press. 
 
 
**

Autumn Light
 
As a child I dropped a bead of brown paint
on a clean sheet of paper
and coaxed it skyward
with air blown through a straw.
Soon it was a sapling
with a few spreading branches
that caught light
from a bold yellow ball.
 
Today's tree bears the marks of long life.
Weathered skin, body bent, thickened joints.
The sky is silvered, faceted,
like the aura before a migraine,
something I have come to know.
But the sun, that optimist, remains,
even if I shade my eyes
to paint branches that reach,
and reach some more,
each stretching beyond the page
and beckoning me to hope.
 
Catherine Reef 
 
Catherine Reef's poetry has appeared in several journals, including The Ekphrastic Review. She is a poet and an award-winning biographer, whose most recent book is Sarah Bernhardt: The Divine and Dazzling Life of the World's First Superstar (Clarion, 2020). Catherine Reef lives and writes in Rochester, New York.
 
 
**

Trees of Life
 
My aunt is a wisp of limb as strong as Ironwood, only fifty-seven
rings from her origin, yet finds the boughs of her lungs
encompassed by a tumor too large to remove. Our great branches
of medicine cannot save us from the inherent cycle, nature’s way
of reminding us that all creation is a tree within a tree, reaching
for light, rooted to each other and this earth. Even the faithful grow 
afraid as an ailing tree is stripped of leaves. We raise our prayers,
fearful of the space between distress and relief. Maybe I speak
only for myself, a fear of loss. What a selfish thing, to think
of my own need for the comfort my mother gives, or of my sorrow
for my cousins, their core shaken, scared they could lose
their mother. She has not lost her foliage or beautiful resilience,
but her breath is laboured. Our whole family is a forest trembling
with her, unsure of what to say except we love her, and we’re here
offering our limbs for support, lifting her hope to the sky.
 
Heather Brown Barrett

Heather Brown Barrett is a poet in southeastern Virginia. She mothers her young son and contemplates life, the universe, and everything with her writer husband, Bradley Barrett. Her poetry has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Yellow Arrow Journal, OyeDrum Magazine, AvantAppal(achia), and elsewhere. She has work forthcoming in Black Bough Poetry. Find her on Instagram @heatherbrownbarrett
 
**

Good and Evil
 
Symbolic are the tree and vine
in canvas sun that seems to shine
to dramatize persistence  —  force
that winter slows to patient course
 
of sculptures stoic, braving cold,
as if with hope by faith foretold
of suns in far more supple days 
caressing their entangled maze 
 
until the leafing sprigs appear
in saint and serpent making clear
the struggle to survive resumes
as battle fought from roots to blooms
 
while unaware that they entwine
as good and evil they define.
 
Portly Bard
 
Old man.  Ekphrastic fan.
 
Prefers to craft with sole intent...
of verse becoming complement...
...and by such homage being lent...
ideally also compliment.
 
Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise
for words but from returning gaze
far more aware of fortune art
becomes to eyes that fathom heart.

**
 
passages
 
because the world is always
both more and less
than perception permits
 
All these invisible bridges—so many of them—but only the subliminal recognizes their presence and sees how far it is from earth to sky.
 
because humanity straddles the line
between thinking and feeling
 
Crossing is not realized by strength but by letting go, becoming the echo that is given away and then returns.
 
because creation holds its shadow
close, not leading or following
but enveloping itself in a cocoon
like an endless refrain
 
The song listens, its trajectory wandering through and beyond the tangible, pulling all that is silent into its oracular melody.
 
because we are
both more and less
than we could be
 
On the other hand—for there is always one waiting in the wings—is the edge the destination or a leap of faith?
 
because memory and
forgetfulness merge
together and become confused
 
Are we moving toward the end of something, or are we seeds waiting to be tossed into the void?
 
because so much
that we contain
surprises and mystifies
in equal measure
 
What if, is, possibility?—a crazy hope, a kept promise, an Enso painted white on black that turns into an opening into the cosmos--
 
because each voice embodies
both chaos and clarity
 
—a magic portal, a reconciliation of life with itself.
 
because when the end
is reached there is always
more after all
 
Kerfe Roig
 
Kerfe Roig lives and works in NYC, where the many trees keep her company as they nourish all of the city's residents—animal, vegetable and mineral—and reflect the changing seasons of their lives.
 
 
**

Vincent's Tree
 
excerpt from a letter to van Gogh in 1889
Madame Tissot, his neighbour, writes--
 
The tree that stands beyond my garden wall
now bears your name, Vincent --
as I have seen it act
like the trees in your paintings -- wild
with a need to claw the wind
and pull from the yellow dusk
 
a melancholy bile
that saints and pilgrims have known
through the centuries, a restlessness
that unsettles the soul
 
and makes the landscape react
in a sign language of its own.
A language, you master so well
in the storm of your brushstrokes — like the dark
spelling of crows
across a wheat field spasmodic
in shades of gold;
 
or what has been viewed here
in the hills of Provence, the silhouette of trees
begging in their twisted forms
to be seen as something sacred, birth mothers
of a vineyard or wood.
 
Wendy Howe
 
Wendy Howe is an English teacher and free lance writer who lives in Southern California. Her poetry reflects her interest in myth, diverse landscapes, and ancient cultures. Over the years, she has been published in an assortment of journals both on-line and in print. Among them: The Copperfield Review, Silver Blade Magazine,, The Poetry Salzburg Review, Eye To The Telescope, The Tower Journal and The Orchards Journal. Her most recent work will be forthcoming in  Carmina Magazine  and Sun Dial Magazine later this year.
 
 
**

The Wait

The sky is the colour of the lake
veiled behind the echo of chrysanthemum
and ripples of distance.

The yellow highway inching
its way to meet the grey line of the horizon
is a work-in-progress.
Just like the roofless, unpainted houses
at the edge of the village.

Below the cement bridge, river Kapila,
hums a tune
on loop,
that feels like the leathery back of a memory.

A bare tree stands in meditation,
waiting for spring
to clothe her limbs, green.
 
Preeth Ganapathy

Preeth Ganapathy is a software engineer turned civil servant from Bengaluru, India. Her works have been published in several magazines such as The Ekphrastic Review, Soul-Lit, The Sunlight Press, Atlas+Alice, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Mothers Always Write, Tiger Moth Review and elsewhere. Her microchap, A Single Moment, has been published by Origami Poems Project. She is also the winner of Wilda Morris's July 2020 Poetry Challenge.

**

Down to the Wire

Lying on your side amongst crumpled hotel sheets
your left hip curves like the timber skeleton
of a rowboat blanched to almond by the sun.

I can hear the chatter of birds outside the window
in a leafless liquid amber, and look out to watch them
flap their wings as if to frighten away grey storm clouds 

looming over the twisted trunk and turning the sun 
to a pale stain on the sky. Goosebumps 
bring your skin alive and you pull the doona up 

to interrupt my view. My heartbeat slows as the rain falls. 
We are somewhere unfamiliar pretending 
we’re still ok.
 
Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman
 
Linda is a poet living in Lake Tabourie, NSW Australia. She’s beginning her arts degree in creative writing. In the last 12 months she has been enjoying the thrill of being published and having her work read by people from around the world. 
 
**
 
Shared Roots
 
Hello, old friend.
Has it really been sixty years
since we met? 
 
I’m sorry to see her looking old 
and gnarly, but it’s hard to look 
her best shivering in the winter wind 
without her elegant emerald coat.
 
As a child, I thought she was old, 
like Mama. But trees just grow 
more quickly than little girls, 
especially this girl – small at every age.
 
We were almost like sisters, the way 
we understood each other without words.
She looks glad to see me again, 
seems to bend low for a closer look, 
much like how she used to reach out 
a sturdy limb to help me up, then cradled 
me in her upper branches. 
 
How I welcomed a cool breeze 
in Virginia summers, loved tucking
myself into my private hideaway 
to think about the world. My coming
of age was a rude shock, when Mama 
sent my brother out to saw off 
the low limbs.
 
Today no one seems to be home
in what was once my home, 
so I took a chance on trespassing
to see her. I don’t get back often.
 
Dear friend, thank you 
for giving me a giant’s view 
of the world. Because of you, 
I’ve always tried to look 
at everything from different angles. 
 
Alarie Tennille
 
Alarie Tennille graduated from the first coed class at the University of Virginia, where she earned her B.A. in English, Phi Beta Kappa key, and black belt in Feminism. Retired now, Alarie serves on the Emeritus Board and Programming Committee of the Writers Place in Kansas City, Missouri. Her latest book, Three A.M. at the Museum, was named a Director’s Pick at the Nelson-Atkins Museum’s gift shop. Please visit her at alariepoet.com.
 
 
**

Interstellar 

Ash Hawthorn spent his childhood climbing trees in the village meadow and watching the world below. Settled comfortably on a branch, he daydreamed or read books, and made friends with countless birds and squirrels who approached him without fear. At night, he mounted the towering oak tree in the garden and perused the sky, naming the constellations and the planets he learned at school.

For higher education, Ash debated between studying astronomy or botany. In the end he opted for plant biology because of his passion for trees. The celestial objects were far away, yet he could touch and feel the woods, identify their leaves and fruits.  

Ash became a spiritual man as well as a plant biologist. He travelled the world to acquaint himself  with exotic plants in various terrains. Each morning, after his yoga meditation, he hugged a tree and continued a ritual he'd begun so long ago.  At home, he wrapped his arms around the magnificent acacia in the garden. When abroad, he found a local tree to exercise his routine. Trees talked to him, he felt their vibes and communication lines.

On the way back from The Aokigahara Forest in Japan, which some called the suicide or talking forest, he was thrilled to have successfully made it through the challenging trail without a guide or using markings. The trees had guided him as his feet pounded the lava rocks and edged around perilous pit holes.

Ash clicked on the notification from the NASA website he subscribed to and read:

A small, recently discovered asteroid -- or perhaps a comet -- appears to have originated from outside the solar system, maybe from a distant part of  our galaxy. If so, it would be the first "interstellar object" to be observed and confirmed by astronomers.

‘How exciting,’ Ash thought, interstellar, as in science-fiction movies and books. He wished he could see it, and wondered if it would have an impact on earth, perhaps strike it. Probably not, as most space stations were equipped with devices to repel such a happening. Yet, in the event they resorted to such action, what effect would this create on the entire universe? These thoughts occupied his mind as he continued his tours. 

Trekking in the Valdivian rain forest between Chile and Argentina, Ash felt thirsty and hot. He took off his safari jacket and hung it on the branch of a towering Araucaria araucana, better known as the Monkey puzzle tree. Leaning against its trunk, he drank water from the thermos and rested. The air was still, though on its languid current he detected a hint of expectancy. Under the cerulean sky, the tree whispered. He wrapped his arms around it and listened. “Interstellar,” it said. Ash smiled and repeated, “Interstellar.”

He smelled burning, and raising his head, spotted a massive fireball approaching. That was the last thing he saw before his interstellar journey transported him to another dimension.

Sebnam E. Sanders

Sebnem E. Sanders lives on the Southern Aegean coast of Turkey and writes short and longer works of fiction. Her stories have appeared in various online literary magazines, and two anthologies. Her collection of short and flash fiction stories, Ripples on the Pond , was published in December 2017. More information can be found at her website where she shares some of her work: https://sebnemsanders.wordpress.com/Ripples on the Pond

**

The Mystery of What We Are Made Of  
 
is a finger crooked between exclamation
and inquiry, a tree “whose madly peeling
bark is the color of a roan, perhaps, or
an Irish setter.” A gnarled survivalist,
 
the tree maintains its singular skywardness
while cleaving to a straight-from-the-roots viewpoint
not unlike the last two years of pandemic.
It’s like it knew, if we didn’t lose all our leaves,
 
we’d see another rain. Like a sycamore
on a nature trail, towering as weathered
or maybe more so than this darker cousin--
pale bark a library of scrolls, sun and smog
 
leaving it nearly bare-branched. I could hear it
creaking just from the look of it, devoted
as it apparently was to stay in place
with dog-like devotion. Something in the wood
 
to survive despite itself, with the afternoon
glare scorching down on it, all along its bark,
until the question or exclamation into
which its trunk contorted turned ring after ring--
 
an accumulation which became its meaning
and echoes through my roots, into heartwood each
look into the sun over morning coffee--
void scratching as if I were air, not limbs or twigs,

the trunk of me somehow staying in the soil.
 
Jonathan Yungkans
 
*Title taken from the poem “Caravaggio and His Followers,” in the collection Your Name Here. The quote in the opening stanza is taken from the same poem.
 
Jonathan Yungkans finds time to write while working as an in-home health-care provider, aided by copious amounts of coffee and the thought that somehow, sometime, the pandemic's venality will fade. His work has appeared in MacQueen's Quinterly, Panoply, Synkroniciti and other publications. His second poetry chapbook, Beneath a Glazed Shimmer, was published by Tebot Bach in 2021.

**

When I Loved You in the Afterlife
 
                                                      "There's a crack in the glass so fine you can't see it,
                                                       and in the blue eye of the candle flame's needle
                                                       there's a dark fleck, a speck of imperfection
 
                                                        that could contain, like a microchip, an epic
                                                        treatise on beauty..."
                                                                           William Matthews, Miniscule Things
 
     Ink-black the tree branches    crack the stained glass sky --
     how many souls I've loved will meet here    their letter-paned
 
     journeys hidden from me     their wind-whispered spirits
     signs of life?    How brave the ghostly sun to light their message
 
      when the tree is empty, leafless?    It seems that nature's drawn
      this season with a bird's eye --     what's behind them as they fly --
 
      hope for an unzoned and intimate encounter    the future mapped
      by memory's lost horizon...     In a place where 2 worlds meet
 
      on canvas, stripped of life     the promise of color is a garden
      waiting for foliage;     dead trees are reflected  in the water 
 
       of a swamp --  Atchafalaya --    what the Choctaw call Long River.
       Near a bridge I guess we'll always have to cross --   where a sign 
 
      says its name is Old and Lost  --    there's fire in the eyes of an alligator,
      and my grandfather puts Tabasco on everything he eats.    His mother
 
      bakes a cake and hums the fais do-do     while I catch crawfish
      (I call them crawdads) and make them pets --   and  who would guess
 
       what I find  on the artist's bare tree     my hand reaching out
       from its line-like branches --     the shape of river's way roads
 
       when the sky is blue     and a love song is life that I shared with you.
 
       Laurie Newendorp
 
Laurie Newendorp lives and writes in Houston.  If asked, what could she say of this poem?  She has seen a thin-trunked tree with leaves, alive and growing, seemingly suspended above a Scottish bog; so she asks, why do the trees seem to be dead in a swamp?  Her grandfather, born in New Orleans, never ate without a thin-necked bottle of Tabasco, hot sauce made from the red peppers grown off the coast of Louisiana on Avery Island. Ekphrasis has allowed her to explore a wide range of topics, sometimes with family characters popping up, and always with love of her nuclear family, grandsons, children, and their father. 
 
 
**

Consult the Elders of Wine and Elixirs
 
Consult the elders of wine and elixirs
From berries and flowers
At the smoky hours
Between darkness and dawn.
A tree, first ladder to apples and sky,
In heritage orchard of endless fruition.
With secrets harbored in a time-trunk of burls,
Hope chest for the world.
Holder of nets from abandoned arachnids,
Woven like cat’s-cradled fingers
Of children.
And nests knit of twigs nib-needled
By sparrows.
Antlers erected by artisan architect
Frame light, gold as dust spray
Of sunflowers.
And cross-hatched roots etch the earth,
Scratch scriptures of wisdom from ages past.
With limbs crossed—fingers crossed--
Like star-crossed lovers embrace on their way
To the dead of winter. 
 
Cynthia Dorfman
 
Cynthia Dorfman has practiced ekphrastic writing as a frequent participant in the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery writing program. She has been a writer, editor, publications director and communications manager in the private and public sectors. Her creative work has appeared on line and in print with the most recent, a story in The Library Love Letter. In the summers she lives in an old shoe factory in Wisconsin, USA.
 
 
**

The Tree Nurtures Life with My Unvaccinated Lover
 
The tree is full of undisturbed mystery
against an egg-fed sky. The tree is full,
nature’s way does not lick as much as blanket, 
olive knots swath around the trunk. 
It’s September. Life is seeping from seed
and skin. Branches quiver, fingers ready to touch 
a bird’s breath. Of chiseled blueness, 
our baby will taste the wind zinging 
like a Copper Canyon Train. Jump on, 
ride through Shangri-La-like valleys 
of cool alpines, and you see a conductor 
reading Don Quixote, now a horse like Rocinante, 
now wake off an epic dream swept as cloudless, 
and now smell mountain marigold outside 
the lowered windows, dusk smells of citrus, 
and now a horizon cracks open, poached.
 
John Milkereit 
 
John Milkereit lives in Houston, Texas with trees that don’t look like this one. He works as a mechanical engineer and has completed a M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. His work has appeared in various literary journals including Naugatuck River Review, Panoply, San Pedro River Review, and The Ekphrastic Review. His next full-length collection of poems, A Place Comfortable with Fire, is forthcoming from Lamar University Literary Press.
 

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. Helping the editor share the time and expenses involved is very much appreciated. There is an easy button to click above to share a five spot through PayPal or credit card. Thank you. A voluntary gift does  not affect the selection process in any way.

​4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.

Send your work to ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry.

5.Include NEEL 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. Do not send it after acceptance or later; it will not be added to your piece. Guest editors may not be familiar with your bio or have access to archives. We are sorry about these technicalities, but have found that following up, requesting, adding, and changing later takes too much time and is very confusing. 

7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 

8. Deadline is midnight EST, September 30, 2022.

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 will no longer send out sorry notices or yes letters. 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! We send a newsletter zero to two times a month, with hopes of more consistency in the future. It updates you on challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, the podcast, 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.

Join our Art of Tarot contest! Click here or on image above for details. Be inspired by a selection of curated images on the theme. Write flash fiction of poetry. Win prestige and cash prizes! Special guest judges Riham Adly and Roula-Maria Dib.

​We are very pleased to announce our new ekphrastic contest, on the theme of Tarot art. And we are absolutely thrilled to have guest judges Riham Adly and Roula-Maria Dib on board! Riham, our flash fiction judge, reads, writes, and teaches from the framework of the unconscious and has a special interest in Tarot imagery. Roula-Maria, editor of Indelible Journal, is a renowned Jungian scholar and poet. Find out more about these writers, their work, and what they'll be looking for below.

The Tarot's evolution from parlour games to gambling houses to divination claims is as fascinating as the timeless and mysterious archetypal images on the cards. The Tarot is widely used today for cartomancy, but it started out as a popular game and took a mystical turn in the 18th century. A modern approach is to use the archetypal symbols that fascinated Carl Jung for therapeutic purposes, psychological reflection, and creative exercises.

We can't wait to see what these images inspire you to write!

 **

The Art of Tarot Rules

1. $10 CAD (approx. $7 USD) entry fee gets you an ebook with 36 Tarot-themed images, and you can submit three flashes or poems. First place prize for poetry and for flash fiction land $100 CAD prize each.

2. You can enter as many times as you like, using The Art of Tarot purchase button below as many times as you wish.

​3. Poetry and flash fiction, up to 750 words per piece.

4. Use one or more of the artworks in the booklet to inspire your stories and poetry. You can interpret the artwork and the theme in any way you are moved to. Read the judges' overviews in this post (below) to get a feel for what they're looking for.

5. Ten poems and ten flashes will be chosen by the editor of TER and by our guest judges to publish in The Ekphrastic Review. Three poems and three stories will be finalists. One poem and one flash will take first place and each win $100CAD. The judges will read submissions blind.

6. Include a 75 words or less bio.

7. Use TAROT in the subject line.

8. Deadline is November 23, 2022.

9. Winners will be announced in December.

10. Submission email: theekphrasticreview@gmail.com
​
A Word From Our Guest Judges

Sometimes, the only way for us to confront a truth is to summon that never-ending fast track we call life, viewing it in a whirr, before slowing down to examine its components under the microscope. Having discovered that Tarot cards are nothing but archetypical images representing one’s journey—or what mythologist Joseph Campbell describes as “the hero’s journey,” we can use these symbols to create stories that thrust us further into the essence of our characters' journey, their perspectives and core emotions. The journey could be something as subtle as small adjustments that characters realize they need to go through, or revelations that are deep and internal. I would love if you could explore the storylines and the archetypical images in those cards using details, colours, and associations to see into the depth of your own Self. From there, explore new themes in your own writing, perhaps revisiting recurring themes, and understanding where it’s all coming from, as you craft your flash fiction.

Riham Adly

It is a with great honour and pleasure that I partake in this exceptional event, The Art of Tarot, so carefully put together by the inspiring artist, poet, and writer, Lorette C. Luzajic. While I don’t understand much about the Tarot in terms of technique, what I know is that it is a powerful array of symbols and images that move our archetypal energies into action. And the difference between “knowing” and “understanding”, by the way, is also something Tarot cards teach us. They speak to us in the language of poetry, which we grasp without any conventional tools of rational comprehension. Because symbols point toward possible meanings, the images of the Tarot speak possibilities without fixed meanings, pointing to the non-rational aspects of who we are.

​Unlike literalism and just like poetry, the Tarot brings back this symbolic essence of connection to other forms of reality. These cards are their own unique “alphabet” sparking truths through negative capability and synchronicities—a fascinating “alphabet” that the psyche can only fathom archetypally. We would see that each card has its own character, flavour, or personality, which matches one of our many archetypal voices that were activated while looking at it. And it is with great excitement to read your poems inspired by such rich visual language, the language of symbols, open—as ever—to hosting the unconscious. The ekphrastic journeys of your poems are evidence of your transition from the “visual” to the “visionary,” where the different voices of the images come to you to be embodied in such beautiful verse!

Roula-Maria Dib

Riham Adly is an award-winning flash fiction writer from Giza, Egypt. In 2013 her story “The Darker Side of the Moon” won the MAKAN award. In 2022 she won second prize in the Strands International Flash Fiction Competition. She is a Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work is included in the Best Micro-fiction 2020 anthology.  Her fiction has appeared in over 50 online journals   such as Litro Magazine, Lost Balloon, The Flash Flood, Bending Genres, The Citron Review, The Sunlight Press, Flash Fiction Magazine, Menacing Hedge, Flash Frontier, Flash Back, Ellipsis Zine, Okay Donkey, and New Flash Fiction Review among others.  Riham has worked as an assistant editor in 101 Words and as a first reader in Vestal Review. Riham is the founder of the “Let’s Write Short Stories” and “Let’s Write That Novel” in Egypt. She has taught creative writing all over Cairo for years with the goal of mentoring and empowering aspiring writers in her region.  Riham’s flash fiction collection Love is Make-Believe was released and published in November 2021 by Clarendon House in the UK. She is the first African, Arab woman to have a flash fiction collection published in English. Riham shares her craft articles about writing flash fiction through her blog “Riham Writes” and reviews a new flash fiction collection every month on her FB group “Riham Reads Flash.”

Roula-Maria Dib is an award-winning literary scholar, poet, and editor whose research interests include literature, modern poetry and poetics, creative writing, and Jungian psychology. She is endorsed by the British Academy and holds a UK Global Talent Visa. Roula is the winner of the British Council’s Alumni Awards 2021-2022 for the Culture and Creativity category in the UAE and had also won the American University in Dubai’s Provost’s Award for Outstanding Literary Achievement 2020; her book, Jungian Metaphor in Modernist Literature (Routledge, 2020) was shortlisted as a finalist for the international IAJS book awards, and some poems from her collection, Simply Being (Chiron Press, 2021) received Pushcart Prize nominations. She is the founding editor of literary and arts journal, Indelible, and creative producer of literary event series, Indelible Evenings, as well as Psychreative, a virtual salon for researchers, artists, and writers with a background in Jungian psychology. Her MOOC, “Why Online Creative Communities Matter” is featured on Academia.edu. Formerly (until June 2022), she was a professor of English at the American University in Dubai.

Editor's Note:

We are very excited to have our long-time ekphrastic contributor Sandi Stromberg as our guest editor this time! She has chosen an artwork by Jo Zider. Welcome, Sandi and Jo.

Lorette

Guest Editor's Note:
​
​Dear Co-Lovers of Words and Art,
 
As an addict to The Ekphrastic Review and its biweekly challenges, I’m thrilled to be a guest editor. I hope Nature’s Way, by Houston artist Jo Zider will draw you in and stimulate your imagination.
 
For the past four years, I’ve benefitted from these challenges, especially throughout the pandemic. In the process, I’ve been introduced to a wide variety of art as well as to the writers whose work is often selected. And while editor Lorette C. Luzajic encourages writers to be a continuing part of the challenges, she also makes ample room for new voices. Her intent has always been to create a family of co-lovers of words and art. 
 
My choice of Jo’s art seemed a good segue after the successful Zoom workshop Lorette led for members of Houston’s Women in the Visual and Literary Arts (WiVLA). I’ve been a member since 1999, and Jo was one of the first artists I met. 
 
She is a ceramicist and sculptor whose work and passions can be found on her website https://jozider.com/. The piece I offer as a prompt is part of a series titled Earth at the Edge. Many thanks to her for permitting the use of her art. She and I both look forward to your responses, whatever form they may take.
 
Sandi 

Sandi Stromberg’s poetry has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and for 2020 Best of the Net. She is a dedicated contributor to The Ekphrastic Review and recently contributed a Throwback Thursday. In 2021, the Review awarded her a Fantastic Ekphrastic Award for her contributions to the genre. Her poetry has appeared in many  journals and anthologies, including San Pedro River Review, The Ocotillo Review, Houston Chronicle-San Antonio Express-News, Snapdragon, Words & Art, Visual Verse, Weaving the Terrain, Enchantment of the Ordinary, and in Dutch in the Netherlands in Brabant Cultureel and Dichtersbankje (the Poet’s Bench).

**

The Rules

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 Nature's Way, by Jo Zider. Deadline is September 16, 2022.

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. Helping the editor share the time and expenses involved is very much appreciated. There is an easy button to click above to share a five spot through PayPal or credit card. If you would like to give more, you can do so here. Thank you. A voluntary gift does  not affect the selection process in any way.

​4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.

Send your work to ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry.

5.Include ZIDER 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. Do not send it after acceptance or later; it will not be added to your piece. Guest editors may not be familiar with your bio or have access to archives. We are sorry about these technicalities, but have found that following up, requesting, adding, and changing later takes too much time and is very confusing. 

7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 

8. Deadline is midnight EST, September 16, 2022.

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 will no longer 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. 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.
 

Reflections of the Living Light                         

                                      "For people rise and set like the sun..."
                                                                                     Hildegard von Bingen, Vision Xl

                                     "I've got the world on a string, sittin' on a rainbow,
                                     Got the string around my finger ..."
                                                                                     as performed by Frank Sinatra
                                                                                     (songwriters Harold Arlen / Ted Koehler)

Nature guided her.    The soul in the body was like sap rising in a tree.
During an Animal Guide meditation    she had seen a bristling boar,

looking just as he had on the banner    fluttering in the wind over King Arthur's
ship, the Prydwen, as it sailed into the underworld    to capture the Hallows

of Britain. It must have been the winter solstice    sun rising over the water
on the east coast of Ireland at Newgrange    because snow had fallen

like chalk dust on the back of the boar    before she realized he was only
a javelina she'd seen on a family trip to south Texas.   But the dreamlike

meditation continued, and she wondered if the pig     was in danger
when a golden lion     sprang from a medieval picture,  Vision

of The Last Days     created by Hildegard von Bingen, her stylized
lion squeezed  into a window-box    in the drawing with the pig,

a pale stallion, a fiery dog and a white wolf    all 5 animals attached by strings
to 5 mountain tops that resemble branches    of quaint medieval vegetation.

At the base of a monster-like botanical Antichrist    (SE of the 5 animals
who lived in the North)    the 4 Evangelists wonder what else will change

in the last days of their world.    John had been an Eagle, Luke, a Cow;
Mark had been the Lion;    and Matthew, originally a serpent

like some ancient Beelzebub    had been transformed to an Angel
with the advent of Christianity.    Like a breeze in their ears,

they could hear God's voice in the trees;   His promise in the healer's
hands -- the hands of Hildegard von Bingen --    a woman who worked

with tinctures, herbs and precious stones;    who knew blood-letting --
the fluid red as liquid fire --    had the power of the bloodstone

and should only be done     when the moon was full, when the voice
of living light guided her hands    as it had done since she was 8 --

2.
                            The light which I see...is not spatial; but it is far , far 
                            brighter than a cloud which carries the sun.  I can measure
                            neither height, nor length, nor breadth in it; and I call it
                           ' the reflection of the living Light.'  And as the sun, the moon,
                            and the stars appear in water, so writings, sermons, virtues
                            and certain human actions take form for me and gleam.
                        
                                                                             Hildegard von Bingen

The animals are guiding me backward.    Together, we cross time
in my mother's story --    and I am falling from the mountaintop

of a floor-to-ceiling bookcase.    A book with a red and gold spine
falls open to the Crusades --    a page where King Richard

the Lionheart is returning to save England;    and alone, my mother
prays to God to save me, unconscious.    There are no bargains,

but she strikes a bargain    holding me up like an offering, bartering
to give me a Father.     And what marketplace is this, where a boy

pulls a sword, Caliburn, from a stone    and becomes the True King
because he is pure of heart?     & why did God, like a judge, hear my mother,

and wake me, gentle as a dove's wing   feathers folded in the shape
of a living harp, the music in its strings    leaving marks, a staff (thy rod

and thy staff, they comfort me)    in an illumination --  A Vision 
of The Last Days    where a crowned figure rises --  body suspended,

as on a cross, while Hildegard von Bingen    watches from a broken tower,
its stones shaped like the teeth of an open zipper    in a space

she has imagined, a purgatory where sins are absolved    and I will live
to be 7 -- a year younger than the visionary artist     when I began to see

God's golden rings -- circles pointing out    what a Father
                                                                            wants to show his daughter.
                                                 
Laurie Newendorp

Laurie Newendorp lives and writes in Houston.  Her psychic energy is low in these troubled days in the 21st century, a shadowed time in history; but the golden rings of light are true to her life story. The first she remembers appeared around a rock, broken open to a clear crystal centre on the school playground in Austin, Texas, circa 1952. The painting can be read differently, of course. It could represent the first and second coming, the spirit of Christ the King rising as Jesus of Nazareth watches from a broken tower, two fingers raised in blessing at the top of the painting, from that place where the sun rises in the east.

**

Without Your Faith

I have no way to understand my visions, that come and come like an avalanche, unstoppable, bright as the sun on new snow, heavy as stone, sharp enough to cut, like knives of ice. You saw hope, old promises, something you could trust, forgiveness enough for rescue from the beasts of the apocalypse.

But I can not bend, curtsey or genuflect, see only the sly monster beneath those holy robes, choke on the scent and smoke of burning bodies, the ash silting up the streets of paradise. You heard the stars singing, their arms uplifted, their faces lit, like the moon, with a reflected glory. I hear only silence, beneath the faint electric hum of dust, sand blowing in the desert wind.

Without your faith I am cold, comfortless, stubborn and dense as stone, alone even in this great congregation, pilgrims on the road to some New Jerusalem, a golden city only they can see.

And yet I cannot look away, unsee these strange figures, a splendor spread across the sky. I have no names for them, no explanation, but there they are, alive, a pantheon of miracles, a gift or punishment, a shining regiment of gods and angels, waiting for me, ready for the promised armageddon.

Mary McCarthy

Mary McCarthy has always been in love with words. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic World,  edited by Lorette C. Luzajic,  The Plague Papers, edited by Robbi Nester, and  recent issues of Third Wednesday, Earth's Daughters and Gyroscope. She has been a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee.

​**

Sights and Sounds of St. Hildegard’s Vision of the Last Days

St. Hildegard enlightens millennia with
a medieval arcana of visionary images,
foretelling the apocalypse. To embrace her
we relearn a symbolic language.
The three panels of the miniature painting
“Last Days” weave together her revelation of
struggle between darkness of 
sharp toothed evil and salvation.

Her powerful, wordless narrative
flows from scene to scene.
A lexicon of medieval symbols offers
a surfeit of wretchedness,
corruption of humanity and nature,
wonders of redemption, faith, truth, and
durance of the Divine City.
We decipher and recipher the epic story;
revise her eloquent twelfth century imagery to
the verbal semaphore of our language.

In a postmodern mode, her story evolves
with past present future blended.
In abbreviated history, five wild beasts
enwrap the past with ghastly long tongues.
A fiendish antichrist emerges from
the womb of the golden mother,
grows large and menacing on a mountain top.
Virtue confronts the excremental demon with
a fulgent burst of heavenly lightning.
The monstrous, spidery creature is destroyed.
We are terrified, huddled together 
the midst of Armageddon.

St. Hildegard’s “End of Days” is
an elaborate graphic design,
a vivid compressed chronicle of
portent and dangers of secular life and
hope for future salvation.
But there is so much more:
look and listen…

She accepts no sonic or graphic boundaries in
her expression of the cosmic, eternal divine.
The visual and aural imagery are creations 
unrestricted by form or formula.
While viewing St. Hildegard’s exotic miniatures,
her spiritually profound, unique music
pulses in our hearts and expands imagination.
St. Hildegard’s eloquent, monophonic music resonates. 
Plangent threnody and elegant, graceful chant
enhance and illuminate her mystical icons.
In the “Last Days” vision
an agile melisma throbs in ecstasy.
Her beautiful chants are filled with love and
sing of harmonious, ageless perfection.

St. Hildegard’s many manuscript visions and 
musical offerings open insights into 
her era and our own time.
They dispel moral confusion,
enlighten turgid politics, 
subdue the lethargy of timorous thoughts and
reduce the carnage of daily violence.
In our millennium, her music and visual 
reflections offer amity and inner peace.

Ben Sackmary

Ben Sackmary is a lifelong writer of mostly poetry. Now retired after decades of college teaching (not literature), he has the time to devote to poetry that the art form deserves. He has no career interest in poetry and writes mainly for himself and friends.

**

The Stubborn Pursuit of Pleasure 
with My Unvaccinated Lover
 
My nightmare—fiery
dog, pale horse, and a grey wolf
licking their last licks
on a sprawling trunk at dusk.
Terror begins when they 
see my naked, thin figure,
a body Giacometti
might have bronze-casted for a
promised-green turf. Life’s lost tongue.
 
The vagabond face
between the robed spirit’s
legs masks a warning. I want
a breath to find my 
clothes. Rope tugs from the mouth, oh
that animal-stupid want!

John Milkereit

John Milkereit resides in Houston, Texas working as a mechanical engineer and has completed a M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. His work has appeared in various literary journals including Naugatuck River Review, Panoply, San Pedro River Review, and The Ekphrastic Review. His next full-length collection of poems, A Place Comfortable with Fire, is forthcoming from Lamar University Literary Press.

**

Doctor of the Church
 
It was during the High Middle Ages. Women were the keepers of the house, the carers of families, the obedient wives of husbands.  Hildegard von Bingen knew that, if she wanted to use her intellect and her talents as a woman, there was only one place: a convent. And she thrived. Polymath, composer, mystic, visionary, writer… Mother Superior, founder of natural history, purveyor of ecstasy. Hildegard von Bingen, the most accomplished of scientific women, lived for the reflection of the ‘living light’, the God who had clearly endowed her with a superior brain, music and rapture. She was never officially canonized, even though Saint Hildegard has been part of Church lore for centuries. The holiness of her life was never in doubt. When they made her ‘Doctor of the Church’, her intellectual achievements were finally recognized. Would that female scientists, composers, teachers today were thus enabled and elevated. 

Songs of ecstasy
Correspondence with kings
Fulfillment

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 six poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was twice nominated for a Pushcart. Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders? has been published by Kelsay Books in July 2022. Also on Amazon the very latest: Whistling in the Dark, published by Taj Mahal Publishing House in August 2022. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/

**

Vision of the Last Days

We tied the beasts by their tongues in the upper chamber, hoping to keep them quiet. The dogs couldn’t bolt when the demon arrived, but they did gag out tiny barking noises. The unicorn, outraged, stamped on the head of the nearest dog. He reared back, pulling on his tongue, trying to tear himself free and get at the other dogs. Bright red blood gushed from his mouth. 

Hildegard was oblivious to all the commotion. She had considered her work finished earlier and retired after lunch to the attic. There she dawdled with her doll castle and listened to her transistor radio.
That, of course, left only me to deal with the devil’s disciple, who snarled at me, his face black with rage, his clawed hands clinching rhythmically at the air. As my subjects cowered near the edge of the great hall, my mind emptied, blank with fear. I had absolutely no idea what to do. But somehow, I began to sway in time with the angry motion of the demon’s hands. This must have startled him, for he abruptly stopped and looked at me intently. I stood very still. We stared at each other for an awful, awkward moment. It really did seem like an eternity. Then I did a little barefoot shuffle, some automatic, unconscious dance step dredged from childhood classes. I lifted my arms and spread my voluminous golden sleeves in a gentle, languorous arc. I smiled.

“Do you like my codpiece?” I asked.

Barry Basden

Barry Basden lives in the Texas hill country with his wife and Bean, their little rescue terrier.

**

The Mystery of Umbra Viventis Lucis 

Are we doomed to troll through Wikipedia or other google sites
for enlightenment? Would that we could summon Hildegard herself 
to explain the grotesque figures drawn with hints 

of a childish hand: monsters and cowering little people
and the levitating king-figure with a face in his crotch.
And what of the strange animals with their long, notched tongues

licking what could be slender fingers or just as easily
the tentacles of an octopus, and the man/woman
who appears to be teetering on razor blades? (no wonder 

he/she’s got their fingers crossed). Between you and me, I suspect 
a learned type or two will want to extol the picture’s depth of meaning 
without actually having a clue, something they certainly

won’t be admitting to any time soon. But Pope Eugenius
was impressed and said You go girl!..get that shit out there- or
I imagine papal words to that effect - (Hildy: talk about raising your profile

in one fell swoop!)         Personally, 
I’d like to speak with Hildegard. And ask about the relationship
to god/the universe or whatever spiritual magic she was birthed with maybe

as a caul around her. Too bad she died so long ago, farewelled,
by all reports, by two streams of light appearing across the skies
to cross the room where she lay dying.       I believe.

Though thousands wouldn’t.

Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman

Linda is a Poet living in Lake Tabourie, NSW Australia. She’s been writing poetry since April 2021, with formal qualifications in Business Management and Personal Training. She is just beginning her Arts Degree in Creative Writing. She has recently been published in three anthologies, on Viewless Wings.com, in The Ekphrastic Review, with a poem forthcoming in the next edition of the Star 82 Review. Linda adores animals, family, and good champagne not necessarily in that order.

**

Visions
 
The abbess dipped her brush in the crimson and carefully dabbed in an eye. The monster winked at her. She filled in the other eye. Black pupils bored into hers, and she turned away for a moment to clear the vision. She had been gifted with visions since she was a small child and they called her Hildegard. The name had faded, but she had the visions still. 
 
Her fingers itched to continue. Paint us. Give us life. There was more crimson needed for the demon’s tongue. The abbess added three tiny brush strokes. She had been worried that the visions were sinful, but the archbishop had encouraged her to set them down in her books. Not sinful then. But disturbing. Distressing sometimes. 
 
She changed brushes. Ochre. The prince’s breeches. The monster’s head was between the prince’s legs. Why did he have a demon in the place of his manly parts? She sighed. An allegory possibly. Men’s urges. Though the times were reasonably calm, even if the English were still fighting one another. They had no king, hadn’t had one for as long as she could remember. And the Pope was calling for another crusade. 
 
The abbess looked at the red-eyed monster, black, hair like serpents. Evil, but not a Saracen, she decided. They worshiped one god, not like the Heathens. They were simply fighters. It was their land after all. The men fought and the women prayed. It was the same the world over.

She thought for a moment about the Saracen women, praying, cloistered and veiled just as she was. But in their houses, fountains played in colonnaded courtyards, and birds sang in cool shaded gardens. Their husbands and fathers watched the stars and made maps of the heavens. Did their women watch too and wonder with them? She would have done, if she had been able. She hoped her Saracen-sisters did.
 
She had never known her own sisters. Hildegard had been given into God’s service when she was too young to remember, and her occupations had always been those of God’s handmaiden. She had been observed night and day. Protected from evil.
 
Green this time. The Serpent with a woman’s face. The Serpent always had a woman’s face. It was God’s will. She paused, the brush poised above the tiny puddle of verdigris, thinking of a clear desert night, a deep black sky alive with stars, a jackal howling. 
 
In a deft movement, the hovering brush dipped instead into the oak gall ink, and the abbess gave the Serpent a neat black beard.
​
Jane Dougherty

Jane Dougherty lives and works in southwest France. Her poems and stories have been published in magazines and journals including Ogham Stone, The Ekphrastic Review, Black Bough Poetry, ink sweat and tears, Gleam, Nightingale & Sparrow, Green Ink and Brilliant Flash Fiction. She blogs at https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/ Her poetry chapbooks, thicker than water and birds and other feathers were published in October and November 2020.

**

Monster Hide-N-Seek
 
There are no monsters hunting me,
Not one for me to hear or see,
Though it’s said that they are there,
No monster limbs are in my hair.
 
I thought I heard a thump one night,
I pulled my covers snug and tight,
I closed my eyes and sang a song,
That sound alone should make them gone.
 
Maybe the monsters could be nice?
A friend once voiced her sage advice,
I rolled my eyes, patted her hand,
It’s sweet how she can’t understand.
 
The monsters do not smile or speak,
They do not hide for me to seek,
Their life is only as I breathe,
The monsters are inside of me.

Corrie Pappas

Corrie Pappas is a small business owner living outside of Boston. Her poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review and she is the author of the children’s book, Come Along and Dream.

**

The Colours of Night

I hear the children play
Stacking stones
All the seven ahead of ball
Breaking again-
I breathe the dead
Rising up a precipice
Walking past my body
Anchored in now.

From the rear car window
I watch myself
Sitting on a broken fence-
Hands drooping, one leg folded
The other unable to reach the ground.

Dark and hollow
Spread across the whole, half eaten
Like a wall with a peeling paint-
I will find the lost in numbers
Under the lighted lanterns,
As a child where I had envisioned
Tall bears hairy and brown
Paws up in the air.

The inner ghost splits
Lightning cuts up the sky
Thunder thrusts the eyes shut
That never meet another sunrise.

Abha Das Sarma

An engineer and management consultant by profession, Abha Das Sarma enjoys writing the most. Besides having a blog of over 200 poems (http://dassarmafamily.blogspot.com), her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Spillwords, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Sparks of Calliope, Trouvaille Review, here and elsewhere. Having spent her growing up years in small towns of northern India, she currently lives in Bengaluru.

Join us on Sunday afternoon for an ekphrastic writing session. Our small group creative writing playgrounds are about connection, community, and conversation, and you'll discover intriguing artworks and leave with ideas and drafts for poetry and small fictions.

Workshops are via Zoom, and cost $30 CAD or approx. $24 USD.

Click here or on image of angel for more information.

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. Helping the editor share the time and expenses involved is very much appreciated. There is an easy button to click above to share a five spot through PayPal or credit card. If you would like to give more, you can do so here. Thank you. A voluntary gift does  not affect the selection process in any way.

​4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.

Send your work to ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry.

5.Include LURISTAN 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. Do not send it after acceptance or later; it will not be added to your piece. Guest editors may not be familiar with your bio or have access to archives. We are sorry about these technicalities, but have found that following up, requesting, adding, and changing later takes too much time and is very confusing. 

7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 

8. Deadline is midnight EST, September 2, 2022.

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 will no longer send out sorry notices or yes letters. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 

12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 

13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send Spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the  challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 
​
​14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges!
​
15. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages!

16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.

Dear Writers, Dear Readers,
 
This challenge was absolutely brutal on this end. We received an avalanche of entries. Choosing a selection was a terrible task. I always aim to include as many as possible for these challenges, and still lose sleep over what I leave out. Our whole purpose at The Ekphrastic Review is to give space to your words and share diverse ekphrases that come from art. Our challenge section is about showing all the different ideas that one painting or artwork can generate in a variety of writers. And we do that, but choosing is still tough. This time, it was really tough. We had an outpouring of responses. 
 
We choose a variety of artworks for these prompts, always curated to provoke your curiosity and set you on a discovery pathway. We aim to tip your writing into unexpected directions and open surprising new doors to art. Once in awhile, we pick one of the “big” paintings of art’s history- The Starry Night, Nighthawks, and now, The Persistence of Memory. These are paintings that have had a major impact on countless people. If much has been said about them, there is still much more they can and will inspire. Dali and his work are fascinating, and this painting resonates in intriguing ways, far and wide, with writers in a unique space to give words to the themes suggested, to philosophize and analyze and dissect.
 
We love seeing entries from new writers and new to us writers. We also love giving a platform to long-time contributors who give so much to this community. I left out so many wonderful entries by favourite regulars and had to make difficult decisions between many new voices. I say this every now and again to remind you: know that your words matter to us. We can’t run even a fraction of submissions we receive even though we publish daily, plus two monthly challenge showcases that are brimming over. Know that we love how inspired you are, the heart you bare, the lantern that you are, illuminating art and our tough world.
 
I hope you enjoy the works selected for Dali’s melting clock painting.
 
Until next time, love, Lorette
 
**
​

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. Helping the editor share the time and expenses involved is very much appreciated. There is an easy button to click above to share a five spot through PayPal or credit card. Thank you. A voluntary gift does  not affect the selection process in any way.

​4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.

Send your work to ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry.

5.Include VON BINGEN 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. Do not send it after acceptance or later; it will not be added to your piece. Guest editors may not be familiar with your bio or have access to archives. We are sorry about these technicalities, but have found that following up, requesting, adding, and changing later takes too much time and is very confusing. 

7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 

8. Deadline is midnight EST, August 19, 2022.

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 will no longer send out sorry notices or yes letters. 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! We send a newsletter zero to two times a month, with hopes of more consistency in the future. It updates you on challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, the podcast, and more. You can cancel at any time, of course, but may find yourself back on the list after another submission. We hope you don't cancel because we like to stay in touch occasionally!

​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.