Agneta’s Journals

“Who needs eyes when you have The Gift?” 

Mother’s voice, unbidden, courses through her mind.

It has taken whole years for Agneta to find comfort in the gift that Mother (dead, now, for two decades,) has given her, as many as it has taken for her to learn the shape of her blindness: something she’d acquired in the depths of childhood. She has learned how to reach through it with her fingertips, her ears, and (on occasion) the senses of her mouth and nose. And like Mother’s occasional, needling questions, the gift that Mother has taught her demands its own price: twinges of guilt whenever Agneta settles into her reading chair to spend time with her journals. She leaves one open each night, its blank pages exposed. She closes it each morning, wracked with guilt for the cruelty she commits.

Each night as she sleeps, she leaves her journal open in her reading place.

Each night as she sleeps, ants step across the pages and arrange themselves in neat lines of insect braille. They bite into the paper, clenching themselves in place with their jagged, pincer-jaws, and each morning, before breakfast, she closes the heavy tome, smashing the ants, so that she may have a near-permanent record of what they tell her with their bodies. It may take months for their bodies to harden and adhere, whole, to the pages, and there are entire tomes written by martyr ants she has yet to read. Reading those takes a species of bravery she has not yet cultivated.

Her cruelty, she thinks, is plaintive and remorseful. A necessity. The ants understand, or so she tells herself. They never complain.

And now, after months of waiting, she dares to read news of her absconder of a son. 

Osvald has always been inscrutable and aloof—distant and unreachable, even in the same room. There has always been trouble between him and Ulf: arguments…quiet, smoldering threats of pitiless, passive violence. Father and Son were too much alike to get along, and too different to reach an understanding of one another. 

She’s asked about Osvald, and her ants have sent her query from colony to colony—from ants she’s known to those she’s never spoken to. After months of searching, some six-legged stranger had found her son in a sprawling, foreign city, on the southwestern shore of a vast, alien lake. The air in that city—so the ants say—smells of poison, bravado, and strange electric aethers.

It’s all here, beneath her fingertips, all here in the book-flattened husks of self-sacrificed messengers, showing her the life of her son in the orthography of their corpses: of Osvald at home, so far away; Osvald asleep in the arms of his Friend, the dark-skinned one he has mentioned in terse letters to her and Ulf. She’s always known of Osvald’s profound and exacting difference from his father, his cousins, and most other men. Now, as her fingertips caress the cadavers of ants, she has confirmation of Osvald’s honest and inscrutable life….

It is both familiar and alien, clogged with proceedings and passions she dares not consider, even as they’re defined and limned with inscrutable emotion on the pages beneath her fingertips.

Now--

—the quiet tread of footsteps draws her from her reverie. Ulf’s familiar scent—like wood and like hair—touches her nostrils and his voice nestles in her ears. Softly. “It’s late.”

“I’m finished,” she says, pulling her fingertips from the narrative beneath them.

“You’re pale!”

“I’m fine. Just a bit tired,” she says, closing the journal and leaving it beneath her chair.

Ulf says pointedly inconsequential things as they prepare for bed—redirecting his thoughts, she knows, talking himself out of the questions that he has for her. 

After a while, and nestled in bed with Ulf beside her, Agneta listens to crickets beyond the bedroom window. An indolent breeze rustles the foliage outside, and there’s tension in the room, as if thunderclouds gather in corners and beneath the bed. She can hear twitchy uncertainty in Ulf’s silence. He knows her habits as well as his own, and she knows that he’s seen her close the journal rather than leave it open. He’s seen her leave it under her chair, and not on the small stand beneath the parlor window. She knows his habits equally well.

She touches her fingertips to one another, rubbing them in silence, as if to find some remnant of what she’s read--

…an ant’s account of Osvald and his demi-African friend, nestled together, flagrantly naked, as they slept that night. They were, as the ants have described, an entanglement of intimate limbs. An erogenous scent enveloped them. From the ant’s jarring narrative, Osvald is as tall, as pale, and as skinny as he’s always been. From the ant’s account, his feet poked from beneath the sheet and moonlight slathered his soles. His feet, the ants have told her, were scented with kisses. The floor, the ants have reported, tasted of footsteps, of dancing and of play…

—but all she can feel are her fingertips, stroking one another, now.

Ulf shifts beside her. His arm touches hers, and he pulls away with a soft jolt, before touching her again. He is awake. She can tell by his breathing. He is curious, she knows, of everything she dares not tell him.

“Is there a moon?” she asks.

“Yes,” Ulf tells her, softly. “And clouds too.”

She wants to tell him that Osvald is okay—not entirely prosperous, but living well enough in an overseas city, knotted with busy streets. She wants to tell him that Osvald is in love and loved in ways at odds with accepted tradition, and that there are geraniums on his windowsill. Instead she presses her arm to Ulf’s, and listens to the sound of his breathing as he drifts, slowly, into sleep.
 
“Will it rain?” she asks, as if she hasn’t heard the weather reports for herself.
 
“Maybe,” Ulf answers, quietly. “But not tonight.” 

James C. Howell
    
James C. Howell is a fiction writer from Chicago, with a pronounced interest in non-typical, often surreal fiction. Previous works have appeared (under the pen name, "J.C. Howell" in Cafe Irreal, Five:2:One Magazine, One For a Thousand, and other print and online publications. He currently resides in Chicago, for the time being.

**

​Blind Girl Reading 

The village children made fun of her as she entered the library
with her faltering steps, wearing her usual solemn gray dress,
her face devoid of emotion, hair pulled tightly back into a
severe bun, her world seemingly empty of joy or imagination..
The children called her stupid and dumb to her face and
wondered what kind of idiot she was to even believe that
she belonged in a room of books. They followed her to a chair
in a darkened corner of the library where she was seated with
an open book in her hands and a soft smile upon her face. 
The children began to whisper about the light that seemed to
be shining from eyes that could not see. They watched as she
moved her hand across the page, fingers lightly scratching like
the sound of the library mice scurrying to and fro. She heard
them gasp as if startled as she began to read to them. She
described the air smelling like a blend of cinnamon and the
promise of rain and how the words felt like honey on her
fingers, her senses on full alert, helping her piece together the
details in the story that were missing, painting a picture for 
the children to imagine. Left to right, her fingers connecting
the dots, she captured them and they realized then that it was
they who were blind, not her. She taught them to see with
new eyes and to hear with their hearts. She showed them
the magic in a blind girl reading.

Karen A VandenBos

​Once upon a time, Karen A VandenBos was born on a warm July morn in Kalamazoo, MI.  Her youth was nourished with books and her writing. When adulthood opened the door, she was detoured to working in health care for 30+ years and obtained her PhD in Holistic Health. She tumbled into the realm of retirement landing on her feet and was reunited with her creative spark. She can now be found contributing to two online writing groups, unleashing her imagination and trusting her pen to take her where she needs to go. Also on occasion she has had a few of her photographs published in Blue Heron Review.
    
**  

Blind Woman Reading Bleak House
 
She is my friend, so I asked her once
if her sightless eyes enclose her in black,
because black was the blankest slate 
my seeing mind could grasp.
 
No, she said, there is nothing,
and I struggled to understand
a world of sounds and sensations--
the cool smoothness of the arm of my chair,
the car I heard passing on Winton Road,
tea so hot that it burned my mouth--
I tried to imagine a world without light, 
a world with no colour, no black.
 
Now, as evening dims the room,
she opens the Braille book on her lap.
Her moving fingers take her to London,
where November fills the streets with mud
and smoke from chimneys coalesces
into a soft, sooty rain.
 
Like every reader, she takes it on faith
that shadows of clouds glide over moss,
portraits of the dead glare out from frames,
and the moon offers a cold, dark stare

Catherine Reef

Catherine Reef's poetry has appeared in The Moving Force, Visions International, and 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. Catherine Reef lives and writes in Rochester, New York.

**

A Blind Girl Reading 1905 
 
 
The blind girl. You could not leave her alone, could you?  One rendering, not enough. One painterly elucidation, not enough. Seven years later you’ve returned, your intent now honed, sharp as a blade.
 
Yet, Ejnar, I am puzzled. I ask, was my puzzlement your intent? That I should sit on the edge of that blade?  
 
I look. I gaze. A blind girl reading. My eye wanders over the paint laden surface as over a barren field: the stiffened grey folds of her dress, the pallid skin, the heavy tome upon her lap. I am torn between ascending that deftly obscured ladder over there on the left or lingering in this claustrophobic crypt in order to cull, from your chiselled image, meaning. For you – symbolist poet of paint – you are nothing if not a painter of meaning.
 
But let us go back to that other painting. Your first. You are 26. You place your sightless subject in a landscape somewhere near Gjern. A river coils through meadows, sheep graze, the sky is ablaze with light. You mesh the dark slate dress of the blind girl with the hue of surrounding hills to tell us: she is one with nature. She is not apart. And her hands; her hands are elegant. Her elongated fingers tenderly stroke the pale blossom of a dandelion – most plebian of flowers. Her head tilts, acquisitive, as if to listen to her own touch, sensing the world through fingers that gift her the world her eyes cannot. Your symbolism clear. Your image uplifting, redemptive. 
 
But here! Here is another story. Blind girl reading. We are entombed in a darkened vault. You invited us down the ladder. Closed the hatch. And, now, how precisely you choose your inscrutable pigments: raw smoky umbers, liminal greys, soot blacks, the most anemic hues of flesh. Did you weep over the paucity of your palette – grasping in your soul the tragedy of a colourless world? 
 
This second painting – hanging now in the museum with the first – garnered rave reviews, soaring accolades: your poignant use of light as metaphor; light cascading over the blind girl’s head, her hands and upon the open book heralding, symbolizing, celebrating imagination, words, language. And thus meaning! Which this blind girl grasps by pressing the soft pads of her fingers over the raised matrix of dots. Coded shapes felt and the world opens!
 
But where, then, the joy upon her face? Where the lips slightly turned upward, as if to say, ‘Ah, yes, I understand?” No, her illumined face floats, a beheaded mask hung upon a curtain. Awkward siren of interiority, draped in grey, shorn of adornment. Mouth pursed tight, eyes cast down. And where the transparent blue of veins throbbing under the skin, the caressing fingers, the soft pink flesh stroking the brailled page like a love letter? Nothing. Listless phalanged limbs. Stones upon paper. 
 
And the book strewn across her lap, the lifeless weight of it. And the ladder. Only the lowest rung lit. Could she make her way out, this blind girl, with this dearth of light from above – not the merest glimmer? You and I, we will not stumble. We will manoeuvre nimbly through the dark. But her? Blind girl reading? She is trapped in your shadowed lair. 
 
But why linger on darkness you ask, when you have bathed the blind girl in translucent light? Do I not understand the metaphor? Do I not grasp your intent? No, I do not. And you know the saying, Ejnar: we paint only ourselves. You have anchored down this base note metaphor of interiority before which I stand as before a closed curtain. Did you hope to convey the inner joy of reflection, the solace of imagination, the blind girl’s redemption? Or perchance your own?  No. This cell is barren. This blind girl, bereft. 
 
But then, you will accuse me: “You paint only yourself!” 
 
And so, we are abandoned in this liminal place.  Between conscious intent and hidden desire. An edge. Sharp as a blade.
 
Victoria LeBlanc

As artist, writer and curator, Victoria LeBlanc has worked in the cultural community for almost four decades. She has contributed to over 50 publications on contemporary Canadian artists. As a visual artist, she has participated in solo and group exhibitions across Canada. Her creative practice is inflected by an ekphrastic impulse, a dialogue between drawing/painting and writing.  In 2019, she published her first collection of poems, Hold. Forthcoming, Mudlark, a series of meditations in paint and words on a ‘path by a river’.

**

Ignite 
 
Every day I feel my way beyond lock, door, key, window 
shut on advancing cold. Out of loneliness I reach. 
You urge me to try Kindle. Flutter bookmarks to the floor.
Let a tablet float on a surprised chest .I can’t.
 
My fingers need paper, words that float on inked arcs. 
Today it was the Swedish mystery of a murder on water,
a motorboat, chains, and skerries. Tomorrow the dressage
horse of a little girl’s dream. I cannot fall into a screen.
 
I’m papered with fictions. I love being papered thusly
with memories beholding to a shelf. However plain 
I am, however homespun, I turn a key, burst through 
in sunlight with women playing violins, kneading
 
bread dough into pretzels for sale at the fair,
admiring snow sparkle on pine. This, the diary
mind that learns the difference between caiman
and alligator. Fingertips afire with discerning. 

Tricia Knoll

Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet with a large collection of books of poetry alphabetized on shelves, reading for plucking out to read. Her two recent collections include Checkered Mates (how relationships go well or sometimes not so well) out from Kelsay Books in 2021  and Let's Hear It for the Horses from The Poetry Box in February, 2022. Website:

**

Missing Lola Elong (Grandmother Consuelo)
 
I wish I had held your seeing hands stretched ahead of you, feeling the wall as your feet glided toward the stairs, as you gripped the handrail with two fists, landed one foot on a step then waited for the other to join the first, carefully, confidently, step by step until you reached the bottom cement floor. You inched forward, left palm reaching, brushing the wall until it found the door. You stepped out, arrived at your chair by the kamias tree, sat in the sun. 
 
I wish I had listened to your stories of planting trees--kamias, santol, manga, buko--how before you became blind you used kamias fruits to sour the broth of sinigang with shrimp or fish, garnished with tender leaves of kangkong or sweet potato (so delicious on boiled rice dabbed with fish sauce and chili), or prepared kamias chutney. I tried to make the fruits chewy by soaking in apog solution prepared from wood ash, mixed with water, filtered; mistaking apog (limestone) with abo (ash). My experiment failed; the chutney was inedible, ugly. 
 
I wish I could have spoken to you en Español, like my brother who had you as Spanish-language partner. Your words clear and resonant, spoken like the queen I imagined you to be when you combed your hair, waist long but thinning at the bottom. After lavishing the tresses with fragrant oil—prepared by evaporating coconut cream then separating the clear liquid from the mouth-watering latik--you moved your antique comb from forehead to hair tip, starting on your left, collecting the hair snagged in the comb in a pouch to make into a hair piece, adding volume to the neat bun on your nape put in place by your seeing fingers expertly manipulating hairpins.
 
I wish I had sat down with you, recorded your stories of Spanish-speaking Filipino households, life at the turn of the twentieth century, Americans replacing Spanish colonizers, the second World War, my distinguished ancestors; your sister whom I wish I could have known, who died young, long before I was born, whose daughter was my Mom, whose youngest son was the uncle who took care of toddler me, who, until he died, teased me—threatening to hang me upside down from the ceiling when I was stubborn—then laughed and gave me a hug.
 
I wish I had answered whenever you called out, “Who’s there?” I was hoping you wouldn’t hear me, avoiding your incessant questions, hurrying to do whatever, just not to get stuck with you. I was a foolish teenager, unaware of the gem that you were.
 
I wish I had known you when I was old enough to appreciate you.
 
Ann Maureen Rouhi is Filipino by birth, Iranian by marriage, and American by choice. She is a reluctant writer but tries nevertheless because she has stories to tell.

​**

   
​ In the Theatre Behind Her Eyes   (Summer With Her Roses)
                                       
                                                        "Autumn with her lamb, spring with her blossom,
                                                         Winter with her bundles of holly, summer with
                                                          her roses..."            Kerry Greenwood

     Her fingers tracing lines with symbols    she read inside in winter,
     waiting for warmth in the garden    when the sun was real

      to everyone in the house --     flames of light at a magic hour
      when, she'd read, transformation was possible.    She listened to the voices

      of the children playing near the barn    their laughter outside the door;
      and inside, the animals she loved    waiting for her to come, for her fingers

      to understand them.    She was older now, a young woman
      when the artist asked her to sit for a portrait --    a serious picture,

      someone commented later, all in grey tones    the way he must have thought
      her world looked defined by blindness.    He had been patient, at first,

      as with a child, having her feel the brushes;     was surprised when she said
      her father had put braille wrappers on colored sticks    and held her hand

      so she could draw.    It was their game, matching colors to his words,
      stories happening on paper.    She preferred fairy tales, The Little Match Girl

      by Hans Christian Andersen.    She imagined that child, dressed in rags,
      freezing on a corner near Staerekassen    as well-dressed people

      left the theatre    after the sun had fallen through the snow, into darkness
      no different from the day as she knew it.    "Does the world change

      at twilight?" she had asked      and the artist had answered, saying
      it was a time, like sunrise    that showed the colors hidden in the sky...

      "Like what I can see behind my eyes!    How I see the garden!
       I'd wear a flower crown there, on May Day    and touch the leaves --

       new leaves -- so tender if I rub one with my thumb    I can smell
       the springtime.    Why do people who can see with their eyes

       ignore so very many details?    When I was younger, my brother
       put me up on his saddle    and described everything in the landscape

       my fingers find in Braille.    My hands say my sisters are pretty,
       and I have felt all of my features    asking myself if I am ugly

       because my eyes can never open.    Then I remember how my sister
       tied a thick string to me    when we played Blind Man's Bluff.

       She put a scented handkerchief     over my blind eyes so I'd be like
       the others    and whispered we would hide in the very best place

       so no one could find us, and we would win;     the string just in case
       I was misplaced in the woods.    It was summer with her roses

       (fall coming soon, with her lamb)     and I'd been allowed
       to read outside    when I heard my sister laughing, picking roses

       so she could shake petals all over me --     the family's Ugly Duckling.
       Behind my eyes, river water filled with white birds     and I could smell

       the horses, with the boys, always running and riding;    and the roses;
       how the air whispered night was coming, real
                                                                                  and all the swans were swimming."    

       Laurie Newendorp

Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrastic! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential poets writing 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 Togetherness, by Kizito Maria Kasule. Deadline is February 4, 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 below to share a five spot through PayPal or credit card. Thank you.

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 KASULE 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, February 4, 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. Please note, some selected responses may also be chosen for our newly born podcast, TERcets, with host Brian Salmons. Your submission implies permission should he decide to read yours. If that happens, you will be notified and sent a link to share. Thank you!

14. 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!

​15. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges!
​
16. 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!

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

The Angels

There is nothing in the bible to say
The angels didn’t come down
In pomegranate robes and plum coloured boots

Heralded by a band leader
With ivy covered epaulettes
And a shimmering baton,
A cellist in saffron turban.
How wide were the eyes
Of the new baby!

Knowing his gift was to light the way
With these angels already lit
By song and flower.

Before the cities of old were destroyed
And Babel ceased its building
The little wandering troop
Of rag tag angels
Was swept aside

As their brilliance was smothered
Into muddy brown garments
And dismal old kings took their place
And the baby was left for two millennia

Though I see the angels waiting in ruby
At the crepuscular edge of morning
Or fluting pink taffeta sunsets

While the ordinary day goes on
And the baby waits.

Lucie Payne

Lucie has enjoyed ekphrastic challenges to kick start her writing again after a hiatus of many years.

**

Angel Production

Flowered suns
in light pastel skies
Bright colours are
as angels prance stained in glass

Yellow red
Grapefruit rays
Enlighten the majestic vision
of saints creating angels
Winged in dance

Pink auras line
Dresses of flowered kaleidoscope wraps
Blue pink green rectangular speared grey with a fiddle
This party spins fine feathers
That will fly above
To the host of host

The sentinel waves his wand
as the string voiced angels sing

Halleluiah halleluiah!

They are born again
to bow and serve
To The one on high

Bright coloured
purple pink
White banded waists
Red garbed

Wings pinkish ivory angelically laced
Bright mâché trumpets do sing
To the striped sun god

Angelic they are 

James N Hoffman

"I am retired and living with my wife in Ocean City, Maryland.  I have a MA in Applied Psychology and a BA in Philosophy.  I started writing many decades ago but found I like to write what I called colour poetry since I cannot paint.  Later I learned that it is called Ekphrastic and has been as old as some of the Greek philosophy I studied.  I have been published twice in the Ekphrastic Writing Challenge."

**
​
Acting Out

“No Marcy. You’re not reading the Christmas Story from Luke. Didn’t I tell you? Brenda is.” Barbara was Brenda’s mother and Director of Christian Education for the church. This title put her in charge of the pageant and, in her mind, imparted a singular authority upon her. As Barbara gripped a clipboard securing notes, she presented a “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” smile engineered for moments when she needed us “Cindy Lous” to back off.  This smile often accompanied her verbal pinches, which caused just enough pain to ensure you knew she was sticking it to you but not enough pain that you would dare defy her.  What could my mother or I say to Barbara now, when the church Christmas Pageant of 1969 would begin in an hour?  Around the three of us in the fellowship hall, fathers were setting up the stage with the manger and life-size cardboard sheep, and a few mothers were costuming boys as shepherds.
​                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             “Then what will Marcy do if she won’t be reading?” my mother asked. 

“Why, she’ll still be in the pageant, Peggy. She’ll be one of the angels with the other little girls. And sing ‘Away in a Manger.’ They’ve been practicing for weeks. You know that song, don’t you, Marcy?” She pointed to the section of the hall curtained off for dressing rooms. “She can put on the costume over there.”

Other little girls. Pinch. I was ten, no longer a little girl. Worse, I knew those angel costumes. Stored in a church closet except at Christmas and Easter, the white costumes looked nothing like the angels in the stained-glass windows of the church. They were like the one-size-fit-all moomoos worn by my grandmother. 

My mother gripped my shoulders and steered me away from Barbara. 

At the time, I thought this last-minute change in the pageant had to do with Brenda and me. Although Brenda and I had sleepovers, we often ended up squabbling over what stuffed animal of hers I could sleep with. Whichever one I picked was the one that Brenda wanted.  But now I wonder if Barbara was getting back at my mother. Maybe my mother had reorganized a children’s Sunday school lesson. Maybe she had baked marble brownies rather than an apple pie for a church bake sale. Maybe my mother had received a compliment that made Barbara jealous. 

As my mother held up my angel costume, I punched my arms into the polyester sleeves. She cinched the costume at my waist and attached cardboard wings sprinkled with gold glitter to my back. As the musty smell of the costume enveloped me, I wondered if a good dousing in frankincense and myrrh could overcome the stench.

“This material itches,” I said as I pulled at the unhemmed neck.

As my mother smoothed out my costume one last time, she tried to reassure me. “It’ll be fine,” she said—something she must have regularly told herself when dealing with her own disappointments. After one last inspection, Mom took my hand, lined me up with the other angels, and went to find her seat next to my father and my brother. 

On cue, we walked out—not on stage—but onto the floor of the hall. The audience sat in metal folding chairs behind us, and the stage was in front of us. The little girls blended in with the seated audience, but as a tall-for-my-age, ten-year-old, I did not. I blocked the audience’s view of the stage.

Pinch. 

Standing with my back to the audience in a costume that was burning me up from the inside out, I had to listen as Brenda read from the gospel of Luke. On stage. At the podium. Where I was supposed to be. As Brenda read, I turned to find my family sitting two rows behind me. I looked at my mother’s face. With a nod and a tight-lipped smile, my mother commiserated with me. I guess we were just going to take Barbara’s bruising, a bruising that wouldn’t be healed by a story about bright heavenly beings who visit the lowest of the low with divine news. 

After the reading, I started to sing “Away in a Manger” like I was supposed to. But I didn’t know all the words. Pinch. I had spent the last few weeks practicing Luke, not memorizing a Christmas hymn. I tried to follow cues from the other angels, to pick up on familiar phrases such as “fit us for heaven.” I moved my mouth and hummed the tune from the back of my throat, wondering if the audience noticed that I wasn’t singing and if Barbara took pleasure in my predicament. Pinch. 

After the pageant, I sulked for days, but Mom and I didn’t talk about what had happened. If the "grin and bear it" approach worked for my mom at eight years old, when her mom died in childbirth, her father deserted her, and she was left in the care of her divorced Aunt, it could work for me. The next Sunday, we attended church as usual. I even sat next to Brenda in Sunday school.

A few weeks later, Brenda and I were playing in the finished basement of her house, her playroom. I don’t remember exactly what provoked me. But suddenly, I shoved Brenda as hard as I could, slamming her into boxes and boxes of toys. Maybe I was hurt that Brenda never played at my house. Maybe I was jealous that Brenda had more dolls, games, and stuffed animals than I ever would. Maybe I was just getting back at Barbara through Brenda on behalf of my mother. These maybes, though, no longer bothered me. When Barbara came running down the basement steps and saw her daughter on the floor in tears, I knew Brenda and I would never play together again. Barbara’s fake smile was gone, and she could only scrunch up her real face as if she were swallowing castor oil. “Wait till your mother gets here,” Barbara shouted. I knew my mother would apologize for the mess I had made. Yet I didn’t care as much as I had before about how things looked. I didn’t care if I would ever be fit for a church pageant or even for heaven. I was done playing.
 
Marcy H. Nicholas 

Marcy H. Nicholas writes some sentences in between walking her dog, grading student papers, and playing golf. She lives with her husband in Hellam Township, York PA and teaches at Penn State York.

​**

Rose Menyon Heflin

Originally from rural, southern Kentucky, Rose Menyon Heflin is a writer and artist living in Madison, Wisconsin.  Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies spanning four continents, and her poetry won a 2021 Merit Award from Arts for All Wisconsin.  One of her poems was choreographed and performed by a local dance troupe, and she had an ekphrastic  creative nonfiction piece featured in the Companion Species exhibit at the Chazen Museum of Art.  Among other venues, her recent and forthcoming publications include Brown Bag Online, Defunkt Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, Fauxmoir, Feral:  A Journal of Poetry and Art, La Raíz Magazine, MoonBites by Tangled Locks Journal, Poemeleon, sPARKLE & bLINK, SPLASH!, Star*Line, and W.E.I.R.D. 

**

At Night They Come

By the red oak and the redwood trees,
Sun trudging its striped orange,
As I had walked the winding paths
Mitigating nothingness, bringing enlightenment.

Rowed to islands when no moon arose
In waters so still I heard myself,
The angels of my childhood come
Dressed in brown, blue and pink.

Each whom I had wanted to love, whom I had wanted to tell.

They stand here tonight
Playing the music, dispelling the fright,
Spreading the colours,
Painting the sky with white.

Drawing the flowers red and yellow of my favourite dress once.

They read the bible, beckon mother Mary
Of many a hearts waiting for a miracle.
I shall hang the bird feeders soon,
Under the drifting clouds that pain and heal in turns.

In time the oak will be silvery white,
Heavy with Christmas lights outside of my backyard window.

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.

**

Two minutes till curtain

hush now angels 
enough tuning up
scripts away
check halos and wings

into line behind Sonya
shoulders back
and stop fidgeting
three two one

Helen Freeman

Helen Freeman has been published on several sites such as Ink, Sweat and Tears, Red River Review, Barren Magazine, The Drabble, Sukoon and the Ekphrastic Review. She lives in Durham, England.
Her instagram page is @chemchemi.hf   

**

Finding My Place on Christmas Eve
 
Where would I be in the angel production?
(if ever I were an angel)
 
I would hold the procession of seraphim,
corral their exuberance
   until the conductor cued our entrance,
all of us lighting up our dresses with irrepressible beauty.
 
I would revel in the effortless, velvety soprano’s
Minuit Chrétiens and forget all else.
 
I would be the maestro,
prompt the joy,
bask in the caress
   of tones and textures playing,
pay homage
   to the ineffable.
 
I would gape and laugh at the painted sun, mountains, clouds, 
but especially the preposterous, gargantuan mums, 
upstaging the music.
 
I would play the violin,
focus my broad artistic appetite
   on the crosshairs of a well-drawn bow,
pull strands of light from the E string.

Sheila Murphy

Sheila Murphy is multi-instrumentalist and an insatiable extravert with a monkish bent. She has poems published in the The Ekphrastic Review and Presence: An International Journal of Spiritual Direction. She lives with her husband in their empty nest in coastal Maine.

**

Angels Unseen 
 
Oh winged angels guide us to heaven on your magical backs.
Fly us beyond this world of grief and sorrow.
Carry us, as  you have carried so many into the loving arms
of paradise.
 
Sandy Rochelle
 
Sandy Rochelle is a widely published poet- actress and filmmaker. Publications include: Indelible, Dissident Voice, flash fiction north, Black Poppy Magazine, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Every Day Writer, Spillwords Press, Formidable Woman, Ekphrastic Review, Trouvaille Review, Impspired,  others.

**

Angels' After Party

I thought angels were supposed to wear white…
she said,
I mean, look at them…
I feast my eyes on the gaudy procession –
more jamboree than Epiphany;
a rainbow of righteousness & holy flower-power
(the wings & halos leave little room for doubt)
& those shoes!
I count stilettos, pointed toes, boots…
I find it comforting, the realness of it.
I’m definitely not the religious kind,
but I like to think of those brightly coloured gals
exchanging fashion tips,
gossiping about ‘him upstairs,’
living their best afterlife.

Corrina Board

Corinna Board lives in a small village in the Cotswolds and works in Oxford, where she teaches English as an additional language. She loves her job, although she often wishes she had more time to write poetry. Her main sources of inspiration are art, nature and mythology. She can be found on Instagram @parole_de_reveuse and on Twitter @CorinnaBoard.

**

Angels Being Made
 
Nothing raw about them.
Perhaps made of open books,
leaves and petals, whispered things.
The wish of a musical note—willed
into a sing-along.
 
                                    Soaring,
an angel has no shadow. So silken
is its memory, a stowaway of innocence, 
its wings so elemental.
 
                                    Angels,
mistaken for simple things, birds
or clouds, almost human. Allowed
a wispy momentum.
 
                                    Perpetual,
angels exist without time; a hocus
pocus of haloes, they swish
above our heads.
 
You never hear the curse of an angel.
You never hear of a part misplaced.
 
Sue Ann Simar

Sue Ann Simar is a retiree who lives in Morgantown, West Virginia, USA.  She belongs to the Madwomen in  the Attic writing group, affiliated with Carlow University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Simar publishes regularly in small press, primarily in regional publications. She misses attending and participating in poetry readings since the pandemic started.  

**

Soaring High

Angels’ soaring high,
watching from above the sky,
the world that needs them.

Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher has been writing since 2010 and has had many micro-flash fiction stories published. In 2018 her book Shorts for the Short Story Enthusiasts, was published and The Importance of Being Short, in 2019. She currently resides on Long Island, New York with her husband Richard and dogs Lucy and Breanna.

**

Angel Production

Here stands the troop of angels on the stage.
An archangel is a vocal solo
whose name is Gabriel the one most sage,
his anthem is the highlight of the show.

Behold! another archangel stands there,
His name is Raphael he swings the wand
with graceful manner thus directs with care
the string band amazingly well respond.

But where is he the last but not the least
of archangel the guardian fighter?
As he's always late even for the feast,
troubled-eyes angel's now the backbiter.

Once God our father in heaven declares
the opening, Mike falls down the backstairs.

Toshiji Kawagoe

Toshiji Kawagoe, Ph.D. is a professor at Future University Hakodate. He lives in Hokkaido, Japan. His haiku was selected in the 21 Best Haiku of 2021 at the Society of Classical Poets and his poems in classical Chinese have been published in the anthologies of Chinese poetry. His academic works in economics are also published in many books and academic journals.
​
**

Jeannie E. Roberts

Jeannie E. Roberts lives in Wisconsin, where she writes, draws and paints, and often photographs her natural surroundings. She’s authored seven books, five poetry collections and two illustrated children's books. Her most recent collection, As If Labyrinth - Pandemic Inspired Poems, was released by Kelsay Books in April of 2021. Her poems appear in Blue Heron Review, Sky Island Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, and elsewhere. She’s an animal lover, a nature enthusiast, a Best of the Net award nominee, and a poetry editor of the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs. 

**

Angelic Procession  

Though some angels visit unannounced
stranger at the door
others arrive in a triumphant flourish
voice raised
Michael the Archangel strumming guitar.
They enter drab scenes
and all is opals
as heads on the street
turn towards ethereal sound.

Some with spirit doves preceding
or even perched upon a shoulder
bring forth a sun breaking
into flowers, where just moments before:
bare ground, mud running in gutters
sorrowful lowing from shuttered windows.

Swiftly the moment passes
and those of us left to ponder grace
wonder
what have we done to earn such gifting?

Carol Lee Saffioti-Hughes

Carol Lee Saffioti-Hughes.  Seeker of wild things in the north woods of Wisconsin.  Member of the Root River Poets, and the Spectrum Gallery and School of Arts.  Numerous poems published in the U.S., other work in England and Canada, including The Malahat Review, Bramble, Ekphrastic Review. Recent poem published in Poetry Hall, translated into Chinese.  Chapbook:  The Lost Italian and the Sound of Words, Brighter Path Press.

**

Untitled

Angels come out from
hiding to rejoice, and sing
the birth of a king.

Donald Hamilton

Donald Hamilton
Dumfries, VA
65-year-old dispatcher
Life-long reader
Wannabe artist

**

No White Robe For Me

When I get there
I won’t wear white. No.
My robe will be saffron. 
Or cerulean. No. It’ll be
Alizarin. Embroidered
with golden blossoms.
And in the centre of each
will be a tiny mirror
to reflect the light
of stars and the rays
of the sun so I will 
sparkle when I dance.
I won’t have a halo. 
No. I shall wear a tiara 
of freesia and ivy.
And my songs shall be
accompanied not 
by harps, but by lyres.
No white robe for me.

Gretchen Fletcher

Gretchen won the Poetry Society of America’s Bright Lights, Big Verse competition and read her poem, “Two Giant Men in New York,” in Times Square. She frequently travels to poetry readings, awards, and book signings and writes about her travels for magazines and newspapers. She has led writing workshops for Florida Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Library of Congress. Her chapbooks, That Severed Cord and The Scent of Oranges, were published by Finishing Line Press. 

**

Angel

Angel came down 
from heaven to earth 
on her first trip abroad.
Her friends were envious
as word was that earth was 
the most beautiful of the planets,
so beautiful that it had been the model
for building the paradise that was heaven.

Many had never really believed it
some things just weren’t believable,
like heaven, 
few people on earth believed in it anymore
and even fewer
believed in paradise
or angels.

But I believed in them.
I told her how pleased I was to meet her,
how glad I was that I’d believed in her,
how sorry I was that she had to leave
before we found paradise
on earth.

But that’s life 
on earth.

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 of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Vagabond Press, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes Journal. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com///www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/

**
​
Rainbow Angels
 
Fear Not!
I hear the words
and see them 
now—so many colours!
Talking to us, 
among themselves,
they have plenty to
say to us, to warn,
to announce, to explain.
Do you think that angels
Come down,
dressed in white light,
gleaming electric robes?
Do you think they
are a beautiful but
terrifying sight?
For some, perhaps
they are arrayed 
in such flash
and  dazzle.
I, however, see 
angels robes in the detail 
of color in the white--
as theflowers of the
spirit realm,
blooming in hues
of earth, wind, 
air, and fire.
Those of us
who see their true
colors are enfolded
in the message they offer--
Fear Not.
As I listen, 
watch the revelation
of their nature
I pluck, for my word 
canvas the full
spectrum of their  calming
message, their inspiration.
I plunge ahead,
without fear.
 
Joan Leotta

Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. Her poems, articles, essays, and short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Yellow Mama, Drunk Monkeys, anti-heroin chic, Haunted Waters Press,Verse Visual, Verse Virtual, Crimeucopia, Bould Anthology, and more. She has been a Tupelo Press 30/30 author, and a Gilbert Chappell Fellow. She is a 2021 Pushcart nominee, and a 2020 nominee for the Western Peace Prize, her poem was selected for Poetry in Plain Sight (four years) and her microfiction was awarded Best of 2021 by Haunted Water Press. Her chapbook, Languid Lusciousness with Lemon, is out from Finishing Line Press. Her free chapbooks are available online: Nature’s Gifts Stanzaic Stylings, and Dancing Under the Moon and Morning by Morning, Origami Press. As a performer, she tells folk and personal tales featuring food, family, nature, and strong women.

**

The Future's Blooms

How fitting they're transformed on earth
for here is where they proved their worth
and here is where their hymns were learned
that led to wings so rightly earned

by selfless sacrificial stance
becoming by their choice the dance
of burden to preserve and lift
the culture they were left as gift

to pass to eager, waiting hands
agreeing to imposed demands
that only angels yet to be
would take upon themselves who see

their souls as brightly coloured wombs
that bear as seed the future's blooms.

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.

**

Once Again
 
There are angels in the air
a shiver at the edge of vision,
colors too bright for anything
but celebration,
the pulse of a dance
I can’t follow
to music I can almost hear–
though like the deaf
I feel its great vibration
in every cell–
a song whose chorus
repeats in endless rings
of angels rising intertwined,
dividing, to spell and respell
the long words of our brief
definition, our only chance
to rise like angels without wings
reaching for infinity,
drunk on sweet air
and our own reflections
in each other’s eyes.

Mary McCarthy

Mary McCarthy is a retired Registered Nurse who has always been a writer. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, most recently in The Plague Papers, edited by Robbi Nester, The Ekphrastic World, edited by Lorette Luzajic, the latest issue of Earth’s Daughters and Third Wednesday. She has been a Best of the Net and a Pushcart nominee. Her digital chapbook is available as a free download from Praxis magazine.

**

Angel Production

The firmament looks confused,
it is 2020, it is a troubled world,
in sky as it is on earth.

Entry for clouds had to be suspended 
as they were congregating without distance
threatening to spill over the edge of the existence. A dividing line had to be drawn.
Young angels had to choose one way or the other as the firmament was closing 
the last protecting border.

Many angels chose the earth
and took full time jobs 
down the troubled road.
They planted flowers over the horizon,
hoovered tainted air with their breath,
dispelled tears with their grace,
transported messages to faraway voices,
healed unfulfilled desires with their smiles.

They soon excelled -
reading dreams as their sermons,
singing wishes as new psalms,
chanting ‘giving’ as the new blessing, 
‘lending helping hand’ as the new prayer sign.
They were creating a whole new kin.

It became wonder if they will ever chose to return to their firmament,
seeing that here many families  were also living apart and for so long.
A game changer was brewing in plain sight though seeming beyond faith.

Angels begun displaying un-heavenly symptoms - crying, longing, fancying, musing, so much so, they couldn’t do 
their original job - unconditional hope.
Angels tested positive with the fever 
of earthly love. Heavenly speaking, they were becoming lost. And they got the due
punishment - they begun loosing their wings
as their hearts were growing hot. Angels were becoming firmly down to earth and were blowing their trumpets to announce  the birth of the new beatitude - heartiness!

Beware:
Human angels walk its talk
and heartify the new road.
The light embraced it as its new stripe.
In sky as it is on earth.

Ekaterina Dukas

I write poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning and in this one I used the visual symbolism to touch upon the heroic front line of the battle against covid, where many young people, including a close one, turn from career achievers to heroes. As author of a British Library publication on Mediaeval art I am grateful to the artist Sonya Gonzalez for inspiring such a lively sacred figuration. My poems have appeared on The Ekphrastic Review and its challenges, on Portrywivenhoe, on Beckindale Journal. My poetry collection EKPHRASTICON is published by Europa Edizioni, 2021. 

**

Alarm

The alarm on the mother’s hospital bed goes off and does not stop for the twenty minutes it takes for her to die. 

—When will the people come to take me home? 

—The others will be missing me. 

The maintenance men have been summoned; one punches the reset button on the alarm. He stabs it again and again. Is it a mechanical malfunction, or something more?  Nothing surprises him in this building brushed with wings. 

—Never seen one of these sensors stuck at full volume before, he says. 

—Check the battery indicator.

—I did. What about the alert on the pad?

—She’s lying on it, but we shouldn’t move her. Not now. 

Not so close to the end.        

The worker looks at the mother. She is the most translucent patient he has ever seen, her skin scattering light like a skull held up to the sun. He can hardly make out her figure on the white sheet, until she coughs up a streak of red. It flows over her chin onto her breastbone. 

He plucks a tissue from the box and dabs at her sunken chest. 

— Your father went on a bender while I was giving birth to you and my milk dried up, the old woman says to the man who she, at that moment, thinks is her son.       

 — Don’t cry, Mom.

—The only time I left him was that time he beat you bloody. There are a lot of things in life that shouldn’t happen.

— He broke my nose, Mama.

—But when his heart stopped, you were the one who tried to restart it. 

The mother’s legs mottle and swell. Her feet are chilled. Her hands. She is so cold the air around her seems to shiver. 

—Where is my cooked potato? Did Mum put it in my winter muff? Is it still hot?

The man says yes, and floats a heated blanket over her body. It isn’t warm enough.                                 

— Perhaps I have no place left inside me that can hold a sun.

The bed vibrates with alarm.

—Am I going to go wearing this?

She wets her finger in her mouth and rubs the stain on her gown.  

—My life is like a book I barely remember reading. And look here, the story ends with bloodstains anyway.

The angels in the corner huddle together. They were all hoping for an easy passage, with flowers blooming and violin music rising above the sound of the alarm. But the petals droop and the music falls again. The angelwings twitch.

—Did I ever tell you that my father’s last girlfriend sent his body back to my mum, naked in a pine box?

—No, Mom.

—And when my husband told me he was dying, I said no, you’re not. He didn’t even try to argue with me. He just went. It was as if I let him die alone.

She has nothing more to say; her tears stop in their tracks. And with that, she becomes unknowable. 

Her ragged breath rattles through her open lips as they fall away from the jaw. 

—Oh. She’s not breathing now, says the nurse; the sash on her apron unrolls, fluttering around the mother’s face. 

The alarm goes mute at last. The workers leave. The faucet gushes open.

Cheryl Snell

Cheryl Snell's books include poetry collections such as Prisoner's Dilemma (poems accompanied by the late Janet Snell's drawings) and a series of  novels called Bombay Trilogy. Recent work has been published by Lothlorien Poetry Journal, One Art, Eunoia Review, Trouvaille Review, Six Sentences and others.

**

Blanket Street 

The jar of homemade jam has a handwritten label, and you think the writing is familiar.  You pick up the jar and take it with you, on your unplanned journey up the wooden hill, to Blanket Street.

Walking up the stairs, you hold the wall for balance, as your high heeled shoes are too tight and hurt.  At the summit, you take off the shoes, and walk into the empty bedroom, closing the door behind you.  You sit on the unmade bed, that used to be the bottom of bunks, and you place the shoes and the jar of jam on the floor next to your bare feet.

You notice some of the wallpaper is coming away from the wall, and you realise that someone’s been helping it.  You tap the paper gently and see a tiny piece of it fall behind the bed, and onto the floor.  You check under the bed, and the boxes of outgrown toys in small wicker baskets, slap you across the face.  For safety, you return to the upright position on the bed again, and take two long breaths, to steady your mind. 

“I’ve had too much to think today” you say to yourself, and you smile that you can still say something funny.

The quiet room is giving the cold shoulder to the sounds from downstairs, and to the odd laughter and cigarette smoke seeping under the door.  You are just about to pick up the jam jar and the shoes that are too tight, when suddenly you notice the lampshade.

How can a lampshade hold so many sagas, remember so many tales, be privy to confidential histories?  How can the lampshade, with its aging stiffness, and lack of agility, remember the story of the Greedy Princess?

Once upon a time a greedy princess lived near a lake.  She demanded all her suiters bring her jewels to look pretty in, and fruits to gorge on.  Some brought her diamonds and apples, some brought her gold and oranges, some brought her rubies and grapes.

A handsome prince, who lived on the mountain, brought her a silver bowl full of fresh, ripe blackberries. She ate the blackberries, which were succulent and tender, and begged him to bring her more.

“I can give you blackberries every day until September” said the handsome Prince in his gentle voice.

“But if we are to live happily ever after, you must love me for my spirit and not my fruits.”

“I will marry you tomorrow” she said.

That night, the greedy princess told her guards to follow the prince home, steal all the blackberry bushes from his mountain, and replant them in her garden.  Then, they cast a forgetfulness spell on the handsome prince, so that he couldn’t remember his way back to the lake.  They left the silver bowl outside his door.

The greedy princess ate the blackberries all day long, and every day, all through August and September.  She ate them for breakfast, and she ate them for lunch.  She ate them for dinner, and she ate them for midnight feasts.  When the bushes were empty at the end of the season, she waited until they bore fruit the following year.  The Greedy Princess lived happily ever after, and never thought about the handsome Prince again.

The lampshade remembers the story; as does the coloured net curtains, the old sewing machine in the box, and the Christmas decorations.  Lampshades can make you believe in miracles, they can soothe your mind, and they can help you heal.  You wonder how this room was ever so small, and how these outgrown boxes and smells of memories, must be left behind.  You pick up the jar of jam, and the shoes that are too tight for you, and you carry them all downstairs.

Ruth Powell

**

Best Job Ever

I've never regretted it, getting this job on the Angel production line.  Best job ever!  Every Angel is different, as specified on the order website.  And if I say so myself, just look at the quality of the workmanship!  Each of us is a certified artist.  It's a hundred hours just for one wing.  And the halo commissioning, that's my bag, well, talk about job satisfaction.  Sure, it took me a seven-year apprenticeship to become the chief artificer but 'perfect' doesn't happen overnight.  And the boss, he's a stickler for perfection.

Talking of the boss, we call him The Big Guy, he likes us to have music while we work, to keep us happy and productive.  He even got a band in! Not some honky-tonk bunch either.  It's a string quartet, with a real live conductor.  The Big Guy calls it the 'music of the spheres' and you should hear it when all the Angels sing along!  Heavenly!  That's when we know they are nearly finished, they just can't help themselves.  

My favourite place to hang out is the loading bay, just before we ship 'em out.  Gabriel, the one in the pink feathery cloak and fancy purple boots, is in charge of the dispatch ledger and gives each Angel its own special name.  It's usually something ending in 'el'.

Then there's a final quality spot-check, to make sure everything's in order, but somehow it always just is.  

My pal Jehoshaphat -  clothing's his thing, if you need multi-hued angelic tunics, he's the go-to guy – did tell me there was this one problem once.  An Angel that was not up to spec.  Got cast out, he said. Lulubel or Lucifer or something.  The exception that proves the rule I guess.  All that was way before my time, before this production line was set up.

Did I mention job security?  The Angel order backlog is through the roof.  One thing's for sure, the way things are going down on earth, there's never been more of a need for our Angels.

Emily Tee
​
Emily Tee spent her working life wrangling numbers.  Now retired, she has returned to her love of reading poetry, a pleasure from her schooldays, and has recently started writing as well.  She lives in a semi-rural part of England.

**

Angels Blinking Constellations
 
You chose me,
I chose you.
From the first butterfly flutterings 
in my swelling abdomen,
I pondered the work of angels,
the glittering bright lights 
in the night sky,
angels blinking constellations,
announcing the blessing that
was your small dot growing.
 
Perhaps the thought of you
grew from a passage in a book,
the sheet music hymns
held by a chorus of angels.
They rehearsed your welcoming,
your launch from ethereal realms,
a place where colors like ruby red
and golden terracotta
are poppy blooms stretching
and soft, peachy petals painting 
every inch of sky.
 
I can only know that the miracle of 
the seemingly impossible 
resulted in two vibrant sons.
They bloomed into their own constancy of being
with each fragile pregnancy.
It was the work of angels listening,
advanced medicine’s guiding practice, 
both lending a hand to nature.
 
Belief and hope have wings.
Promise exists in the pressed palms of prayer.
Month after month,
we breathe in the blue sky of possibility.
Eventually, the space reserved 
for wishes illuminates our world.
 
Cristina M. R. Norcross

Cristina M. R. Norcross lives in Wisconsin with her husband and two sons and is the editor of the online poetry journal, Blue Heron Review.  Author of 9 poetry collections, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and an Eric Hoffer Book Award nominee, her most recent book is The Sound of a Collective Pulse (Kelsay Books, 2021).  Cristina’s work appears in: Visual Verse, Your Daily Poem, Poetry Hall, Verse-Virtual, Silver Birch Press, The Ekphrastic Review, and Pirene’s Fountain, among others.  Her work also appears in numerous print anthologies.  Cristina has helped organize community art/poetry projects, has led writing workshops, and has hosted many open mic readings.  She is one of the co-founders of Random Acts of Poetry & Art Day.  Find out more at her author website:  www.cristinanorcross.com

**

When Angels Sing 

Angels play for joy alone in heaven,
celebrate in floral robes sewn with precious stones:
no-one's cold or prone to crave the memory of snow.
I've seen it in my dreams. Sacred fingers fashion art
for pleasure's sake. Musicians find contentment 
in an infinite crescendo, dressed for the occasion 
in unfading flowers: enchanted cellists shod in 
agapanthus shoes, gardenia gowns with
painted daisy braid, woven with the patience that 
eternity allows. Shed quills of angel wings are used 
as violin strings, the baton in a maestro's 
clever hand, conducting time in timeless rhapsody: 
in heaven they've been dancing since 
the first cymbal crash, continued through 
a wilderness of summers. I've seen it in my dreams, 
where drum-thunder bursts a cloud of rich celestial blooms: 
camelia, zinnia, beneath a sunflower sun.
And no-one needs their petal wings 
when angels sing - they levitate for fun.

Paul McDonald

Paul McDonald taught American literature at the University of Wolverhampton for twenty five years, where he also ran the Creative Writing Programme. He took early retirement in 2019 to write and research full time. He is the author of over twenty books, covering fiction, poetry, and scholarship. His books include the novels Surviving Sting (2001), Kiss Me Softly Amy Turtle (2004), and Do I Love You? (2008); poetry collections, The Right Suggestion (1999), Catch a Falling Tortoise (2007), and An Artist Goes Bananas (2012), and a recent collection of flash fiction, Midnight Laughter (2019). His scholarly work ranges across a variety of disciplines, including American literature, humour, and narratology. His most recent academic books are: Enigmas of Confinement: A History and Poetics of Flash Fiction (2018), Lydia Davis: A Study (2019), and Allen Ginsberg: Cosmopolitan Comic (2020).

**

Long Before

We were here long before garden 
skies and stringed sighs, before 
birdsong and palmed secrets.

So we will survive
full skirts, the hazard of 
a fancy heel, will outstand tall
men, those everyplace faces with
their beaded evil eyes, their
black moonstone malevolence.

Alas, too long we speak
of survival when Savior is preferred
sweet on the tongue.

Sacred shines our crowns and
we are grateful, some say
Blessed.

Emily Reid Green

Emily Reid Green's poetry has appeared in various publications, including: Gravel, Of Rust and Glass, 1932 Quarterly, The Pangolin Review, Eunoia Review, and The Ekphrastic Review. Her poems have been on exhibit at Lit Youngstown and Beyond Words, an exhibit with Prizm Creative Community in Toledo’s McMaster Gallery. Her first chapbook Still Speak was published in 2019 by Writing Knights Press. She has also been a sponsored poet with Tiferet Journal and their annual poem-a-thon. Emily lives in Toledo, Ohio with her family.

**

between now and forever
 
how are we to become?--
vessels that shape allegory
singing matter into energy
riding on waves of beyond
 
vessels that shape illusions
reconfiguring time
riding on waves of beyond
multiplicities of circles
 
reconfiguring time
the beginning and the end
multiplicities of circles
colors and patterns alive
 
the beginning and the end
infused with light
colors and patterns alive
opposites reconciled
 
infused with light
singing matter into energy
opposites reconciled--
we become

Kerfe Roig

Kerfe Roig has an affinity for anything with wings.

**

​Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrastic! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential poets writing 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 Blind Girl Reading, by Ejnar Nielsen. Deadline is January 21, 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 below to share a five spot through PayPal or credit card. Thank you.

​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 NIELSEN 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, January 21, 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. Please note, some selected responses may also be chosen for our newly born podcast, TERcets, with host Brian Salmons. Your submission implies permission should he decide to read yours. If that happens, you will be notified and sent a link to share. Thank you!

14. 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!

​15. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges!
​
16. 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!

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

**

Loving the ekphrastic inspiration? Try one of our inspiring ebooks below for art prompts or ekphrastic writing exercises.