Dear Ekphrastic Challengees,

Thank you all so much for submitting your Green Terrain-pieces to The Ekphrastic Review. 

It was just wonderful to read your words, prompted by Kelly Austin-Rolo’s encaustic artwork…making it indeed difficult to decide on an appropriate, honourable selection. 

And here it is!

Congratulations to all you writers, I hope you enjoy reading all the pieces. 

Such joy to have TER and the amazing Lorette around!

Thank you all, warm wishes,

Kate Copeland

**

Note from Lorette: Come to our upcoming workshop to meet Kate and follow her inspiration from fashion in art and literature. Kate will present on the meaning of clothes, such as Anne Sexton's famous red reading dress. Lorette will present on fashion in art history. Sign up here, or after the poetry selections below.

​https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrasticwritingworkshops.html

**

Encaustic Terrain
 
It is at night that the old hills,
worn down by the abrading winds,
accept the touch of the moon's light,
 
as lovely as any of us imagined,
making us catch our breath suddenly
by being caught up in this beauty.
 
A tent of trees edges the fields,
the ancient soil lying quiet
after a season of plowing and reaping,
 
being moved about by others,
as if a soft, sensual bed
were prepared for us to enter at last
 
for some distant embrace, distant
only for us, not the waiting earth
the sun warmed and now lies cold.
 
And I can see, as if a vision,
when that lamp in the heavens is veiled,
a dark angel comes to my room,
 
in whose eyes is a portrait of longing
that pours into my perceptions
of desolation I reach for in shadows.
 
Royal Rhodes 
 
Royal Rhodes is a retired educator whose grandparents were farmers in New Mexico. He lives now in a rural village, near to sheep farms, Amish communities, and an environmental center where bees are tended.  His poems have appeared in: Ekstasis Poetry, The Ekphrastic Review and Challenge,  Grey Sparrow, First Literary Review--East, The Montreal Review, and in others.
 
**
 
Circles
 
Sun eclipses pasture,
dark shadows the field,
covers livestock grazing;
none stop to gaze up,
 
Arial view, celestial crop
circles mingle, criss-crossed
lines, delineate cart paths,
plow marks like scratches.
 
Rows of bright yellow,
whether tulips or daffodils,
loaded wagons to market
run between cow corn carts
 
headed to silo conveyor –
wheat sways, gentle rustle
symphony of fragrant farm
adds to late summer song.
 
Julie A. Dickson
 
Julie A. Dickson writes from art, nature and prompts of memories. Her poems appear in many journals including Lothlorien, Blue Heron Review, Open Door Magazine and The Ekphrastic Review. Dickson has a BPS in Behavioral Science, has served as guest editor, sat on two poetry boards, advocates for captive elephants. She shares her home with two rescued semi-feral cats, Cam and Jojo.
 
**
 
To Kelly Austin-Rolo Regarding Green Terrain
 
How strange it seems  --  the world you see  --
from where we are not meant to be,
and where your ingenuity
intrudes on your acuity
 
designing thus indelibly,
in molten wax, fidelity
to higher sense of who we are
abstracting the enduring scar
 
so geometric we impose
on green terrain that we enclose
denying what would else suffice
as unconfining paradise
 
for creatures unconcerned with soul
or destiny in their control.
 
Portly Bard
 
Portly Bard: Prefers to craft with sole intent...
of verse becoming complement...
...and by such homage being lent...
ideally also compliment.
 
Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise
for words but from returning gaze
far more aware of fortune art
becomes to eyes that fathom heart.
 
**
 
Aerial Overviews

A candle spilling from wick pool,
or taper dripping while it’s lit,
to fabric of batik in kind,
or blocked ear treated as a child;
but ‘means’, ‘meant’ words, not open minds,
for blue sky thinkers, without box,
or else encaustic not found out,
uncovered, though, but what’s in store?

It takes me to topography,
to architects’ designer sheets,
though colour invests action, place,
a unity within this space.
What shapes this stretch, both up, about,
a drone to figure underground,
the overview for soundings, view
of plumb, dig deeper history?

Both wax and wane of movements, tides,
I dream allotments, footpaths, trails,
haphazard growth, as stories told,
the bold, as earthworks played their rôle.
On common land which time refined -
here shades are buried under land,
of forest lawn and myrtle green -
where pine, mint, pear, lime, sage, and fern.

This crusty slice itself sublime
as clime also in earthy spin,
and like ley lines there’s mystery,
in making mark, encaustic flow.  
Knife cutter bars imagined, swirl,
or mapped contorted isobars,
for whether playing part or not
in how this scape is today’s plot.

Stephen Kingsnorth
 
Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review.  He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.  His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com.

**
 
Home Base
 
Looking at the greens at our doorstep
Two years above me my sister is
Peering through the window on the top floor
One we are. We nickname the runners
Red shorts and Blue shorts
Their rounds around the fields a winding wheel of
Wit and fun between us
Our universe
 
One day I owned these fields. There is a picture of me in track suit
Red and blue. Just hit a moon shot
A face inverted into itself. Firm and ready
On my way at arrival
 
Standing at the window. Alone at night waiting for
Our car to return at the far
Side of the greens. Beads of light run
Through the night and on to the ceiling I count them
Another one, another one
Another one
 
The terrains lie dark and hollow
I turn on the faucet of hope
Filling them up
 
Filling in time
  
Stien Pijp
 
Stien Pijp lives in the eastern part of the Netherlands amidst trees and heather. She works as a language therapist.
 
**
 
The Zen of Dressmaking (iv)
 
It will be a work of art.  Misplaced tartan.  Scraps of, a mini architecture.  I, its sculpture.  Intuit the pattern.  Arrange all the pieces, lay them out.  This will be a mishap of a dress.  Wayward and angular, one to attract the right shade of folly.  Maths won’t help you now.

Secret pockets for my rune of the day, my hip flask for emergencies.  Sapling green.  Not my usual shade…but.  The last one, viridian, didn’t do me much good.  Oh, it was gorgeous, no doubt about that.  Heart-stoppingly green.  Like leaves after rain, touched by fingers of dusk.  But it drew the wrong type, despite being delectable.  Snug-hugging then flared.  Untameable.  

This one shall be understated but all-knowing.  This one shall sense you coming, your whys and wherefores.  Rules?  What of them?  This one spits on rules of form, remakes them.  Yes.  This shall be that type of dress.
 
There will be suns, a moon in half-shadow.  A suggestion of light between leafy shade.  There will be no exposure but revelation.  Paths that lead to who-knows-where.  There will be décolletage.

There will be layers to peel away, petticoats, moss-green.  A fresh winter sun and a morning walk.  Friendly woods, equilibrium.  Lungfuls of air and coming homeliness.  A skyline of wisdom.  
 
You dare to learn this geometry?  You have a yen for the zen of dressmaking?  Then pay attention.  Your lesson has begun.
 
Nina Nazir
 
Nina Nazir (she/her) is a British Pakistani poet, artist and avid multi-potentialite based in Birmingham, UK.  She's had work published in various journals, including The Ekphrastic Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, Free Verse Revolution, Unlost Journal, Harana Poetry, Visual Verse and Sunday Mornings at the River.  You can usually find her writing in her local favourite café or or on Instagram: @nina.s.nazir and X (Twitter): @NusraNazir.
 
**
 
In Our Youth
 
the yard was a retired cow patch, 
filled with green weeds and grasses,
yellow buttercups and dandelions, 
tickling our bare feet as we fought 
epic battles with swords of hardwood 
until we’d collapse, exhausted 
giggles escaping sunburnt lips. 
Each blade of green, 
some browned and darkened 
from ancient mowing,
would slice our exposed necks, 
pausing exuberance for an errant scratch. 
We’d snatch a few for harmony 
or taste the sour dandelion milk 
or blow when white replaced yellow 
and wonder at the seeds’ flight. 
We never thought of their solitude 
after our breath dislodged them, 
separated them from family and friends, 
spread them over long distances, 
not the solitude of a wind-blown seed, 
filled with regret, longing for home. 
 
Tony Daly
 
Tony Daly is a Washington DC area poet and short story writer of fantasy, science fiction, horror, and military fiction/nonfiction. His work has recently been published in The Horror Zine, Lovecraftiana, and others. He recently served as guest editor for Eye to the Telescope’s Summer 2023 issue on Trauma. For a list of published work, please visit https://aldaly13.wixsite.com/website or follow him on Twitter @aldaly18. 
 
**
 
Crop-Marked
 
Only look
 
down
 
and
 
Medieval England lies
 
there still.
 
The old strips,
 
the common land
 
not yet enclosed
 
the common people
 
not yet expelled.
 
 
 
Then there are the newer parts.
 
The squares
 
of enclosed fields
 
divisive hedges
 
the common people
 
expelled
 
unseen
 
buried
 
in time.
 
All the crop-marks of history
 
lying there
 
exposed
 
even when invisible.
 
 
 
But those circles
 
are revelations
 
unexplained
 
by history.
 
It’s unclear now
 
if they are new or old
 
modern mystery making
 
or ancient
 
spirit visitations,
 
fortifications,
 
tombs,
 
or
 
another
 
mystery
 
still
 
the crop-marks can’t tell us.

 
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: Consequence Magazine, Firewords, Vagabond Press, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes Journal. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and www.facebook.com///www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/.
 
**
 
In the Last Days of the Fourth World
 
        after Joy Harjo's "A Map to the Next World"
 
They say that a picture can speak.  It can intone a poem,
can sing the sweet song of holy incantation and elegy.
 
Sometimes, the truth of the earth is too much to bear -
scorched lines, marks etched and scored on red rocks
 
like music staves, a scroll that's rolled and swirling,
scattered with nature's crotchets and minims and quavers.
 
In these last days of our world, what voice will sing verses
over pure clear notes, ululations, the heart-songs of despair?
 
We know it's over.  We have abandoned the ancient wisdom,
all that our ancestors learned of sun, stars, beasts, water, grass.
"They have never left us; we abandoned them for science."
 
The stars are drowned by city lights. Sun rage brings drought.
Grass is tamed to pasture, beasts are unrecognisable burdens.
Water makes wars, pumped from wells, corralled in irrigation canals.
 
Whole lands are turned to patterns of criss-crossing lines.
Roads and runways make a macro level like a microchip.
Everything subservient to man's needs heedless of cost.
 
What road will lead us out of our self-inflicted new wilderness?
What prophet can be the oracle of hope in these end days?
Will we find a way to live a better, greener life?
 
"You must make your own map."
 
Emily Tee
 
Author's Note: This poem's title and the two lines in quotation marks are from Joy Harjo's poem, "A Map to the Next World.” Stave, crotchet, minim and quaver are musical terms in UK English.
 
 
Emily Tee writes poetry and flash fiction. She's had recent pieces published in The Ekphrastic Review, Blue Heron Review, Whale Road Review and elsewhere online, and in print in Poetry Scotland and several anthologies, including Ourselves in Rivers and Oceans, from The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press. She lives in the UK.
 
**
 
Viewing a Landscape Through Cataracts
 
Nothing is clear, all is blurred green
with blotched lights strung out like beads
while every dew-drop glows
at the centre of its own rainbow.
We seem to be in the middle of fields
and there looks to be woodland over there.
I wish I could see the birds that are singing.
 
Surgery will soon fix my eyes:
these blurred colours will resolve
back into shapes and meaningful things
but nothing is clear for this land -
any time in the future, all this greenery
could be erased just by the whim
of a bureaucrat's pen.
 
Juliet Wilson
 
Juliet Wilson is an adult education tutor, wildlife surveyor and conservation volunteer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her poetry and short stories have been widely published. She blogs at http://craftygreenpoet.blogspot.com and can be found @craftygreenpoet on BlueSky and Twitter.
 
**
 
Some Memories are Better Left Untouched
 
I’m falling into this conspiracy:
 
a hint of sheet music
 
                        —a melody?--
 
and a coffee stain (it’s not a coffee stain)
 
the coal mine canary perches,
 
            surrounded by crop circles--
 
the avocado green and harvest gold of my childhood
 
            peeling linoleum
 
            stuffed animals with breath like sour cedar
 
the crinkly paper in my fingertips,
 
            displacing musty motes--
 
I will pack this away,
 
            try to forget.
 
Eileen Lawrence
 
Eileen Lawrence is a lawyer, but please don’t hold that against her. Her poetry has been published by Dos Gatos Press, Mutabilis Press, and the Fargo Public Library.
 
**
 
Green’s Not Easy 
 
It’s not easy being green. Ask Kermit. I was a mentor when all that Sesame Street fandango went public.
Look where it has gotten him. I’m not saying I regret an instant of his rocket-to-stardom fame, what I am saying, and always will say, art is definitely in the eye of the observer. What you see is what you hold it to be, not perfect but with some parts laid 
out in sanctioned sections of your mind. Strive for the place that suits, that spells home, that makes your journey a complete picture: rolling greens or those bright/shaded, distinct ochres, yellows, muted lace. You’ll know it when your green selects its
target and lies prominently among once fallow fields. 
 
life is a challenge 
my blueprint of life is green 
What colour is yours? 
 
Jane Lang 
 
Jane Lang’s work has appeared in online publications including Quill and Parchment, the Avocet, Creative Inspirations, The Ekphrastic Review, and published in several anthologies. She has written and given two chap books to family and friends in lieu of Christmas cards. Jane lives in the Pacific Northwest.   
 
**
 
From Here
 
place becomes abstracted
as distance grows
and I’m subtracted
from the composition
of home.
 
From here
I see the golden shape of you
and every jagged line we drew,  
shadows hinting
at the stories
left behind.
 
From here
the worst memories
can be redacted,
 
(still, I can’t forget
the way I acted,)
 
and I wonder,
if despite the distance
and all my resistance,
 
can I still say
I come
 
from here?
 
Elizabeth A. Curry
 
Elizabeth Curry is a poet and writer. She’s also been a dancer, creative arts therapist, volunteer librarian, and taught arts-based workshops for all ages. She holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts where she received the Excellence in Writing Chapter Books Award. She lives in Minnesota with her family and loves being outdoors year-round, especially at dusk. 
  
**
 
Musica Universalis
 
He cocked his head to one side, rested foot
on shovel -- "Hear that?" I could not tell
a lie; sometimes I'd hear the ocean swell
of the Colorado-blues from the root
twanged between gigantic thumbs, or a flute
wrapped in its bunting mantle, or the bell
for supper. Then however my ear fell
on a mute world: September's earthy fruit
 
(potatoes) ripen best in silence. "No --
to youth, what's always there seems nothing.
As red and green go in to white, just so
this blank reverberates from forest dells
again in crop circles and coffee rings,
down to the nucleus of the meanest cell."
 
I like to think not all things change with time.
My uncle has not worked in many years,
but autumn does not stop, nor work, and I'm
still pocketing these pocked, imperfect spheres.
 
Kathryn Borobia
 
Katy Borobia is a recent graduate of Hillsdale College. Her poems and prose have been published by Ekstasis, Glass Mountain, and several others.
 
 
**
 
Sanctuary
 
You forage the shores
of your thought—where is the line
between in and sane?
 
Some days it feels like
your mind is nothing at all
but an opening,
 
a passage for winds
transforming into riptides,
casting you adrift.
 
You search for a calm
stillness to float you gently
towards shelter, refuge--
 
a place strange and beautiful--
a place to both rest and hide.
 
Kerfe Roig
 
Kerfe Roig lives and works in NYC, where she values each parcel of green terrain.
 

**
 
Frog Song
 
They say that frogs no longer sing,
that wetland patches have dried to hard stones. 
Here in the north, the summer sun grows meaner each year,
but last night the frogs crooned in a joyful green chorus.
Their songs filled the rain soaked streets,
rising from the potholes and the viridescent grass.
 
Last night I opened the door. Grooves recorded on the land
for a thousand years played under stars
hidden by the last stitches of the great rain.
Wind raised havoc along the fringes of the mountains
surrounding my home. Nothing normal anymore,
but this ancient, stubborn melody.
 
Music rises from mud in the street,
from the marshland, pungent as the narcissus
that scream spring, spring, spring.
Last night I opened my own stubborn heart
and wished a storm would strike it clean.
 
They say all will be quiet in the extinct foreverland,
the lines of earth striated with the memory of wild exhilaration.
But last night the frog song was a wake of drunken canticles
that lifted my own small grief. The door opened 
to life, the dark enveloped by green.
 
Alethea Eason 
 
Alethea Eason has recently returned to her home in Lake County, California after a five year sojourn in New Mexico. Her poetry has appeared in El Palacio, New Mexico Poetry Anthology, and Writing in a Woman's Voice. She has written four novels, Charlotte and the Demons being the latest. She lives near a volcano with her husband, a dog and a cat.
 
**
 
The Quilted Landscape 
 
She pulls from her stash the greens
that are meant to be fields
for baseball or sprouting corn.
Some greens will be velvet forests
or rough, weedy roadside growth.
She finds golds that recall ripened wheat
and kisses of morning sun.
Touches of black and midnight blue:
these will be asphalt and shadows--
or tractors turning the soil.
Color determines it all.
 
For lawns and lots
she needs solids and chambrays.
Plaids and stripes
will be highways and driveways.
In prints she sees creeks or rolling bales.
Her fabrics blend vintage and new--
past and present, in harmony with her soul.
 
Remnants and quarters will be ironed by hands
that find joy in warm cotton newly pressed,
then cut by fingers at home in shears
and stitched by one who knows the feel of the land--
whose needle forms valleys, crags, and hills,
crop circles, ridges, and level ground.
 
What she has seen and learned flows into her work
the way inspiration pours from her stash.
She draws on all she has loved, because,
in art as in life,
one needs love to build a world.
 
Catherine Reef
  
Catherine Reef's poetry has appeared in several online and print journals. She has published more than forty nonfiction and biographical works on subjects including Sarah Bernhardt, Queen Victoria, and Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. A graduate of Washington State University, Catherine Reef lives and writes in Rochester, New York.
 
**
 
On the Blue-Yellow Spectrum to Green
 
Central Park lawns and evergreens,
Cezanne and Pissarro impressions of Giverny,
Key West sky as it stretches from the Atlantic to the Gulf.
Jealousy, envy, and American paper money,
a dead friend’s eyes before they closed.
The afghan my mother crocheted for my infant son.
The hospital room where he cried for his mama
who was upstairs recuperating from meningitis.
Demerol circles and CAT scan angles,
a collage of infection and antibiotics,
blue and yellow confluence to green.
 
Barbara Krasner
 
Barbara Krasner's kitchen uses the complementary colors of blue, yellow, and green. She holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Nimrod International, Paterson Literary Review, Typehouse, Cimarron Review, Rust + Moth, and other journals. She lives and teaches in New Jersey.
 
**
 
Cornucopia's Ghost
 
She kept rolling and making the point
for 12,000 years but now
the point is that the point
will soon vanish when 
no one is left to worship
at her rotting shrines.
 
dan smith
 
dan smith has been widely published in print and on-line in such diverse journals as The Rhysling Anthology, Scifaikuest, Deep Cleveland Junk Mail Oracle and Gas Station Famous. Most recently he has had poems at dadakuku, Five Fleas Itchy Poetry and Cold Moon Journal.   
 
**
 
With Thoughts of William Blake
 
Is this the green and pleasant land you had in mind?
I wonder what you would make of this metal bird
circling Heathrow, trapped and waiting to descend.
 
My eyes glance through glass, come to rest
on a patchwork quilt sewn into fields
of wheat and hedgerow, threaded with yellow.
 
I imagine the ground teeming with beetle,
the sky awash with gulls swooping full throttle
looping the metal coils that infiltrate the edge.
 
For this, Mr Blake, is the Green Belt, to protect
this beautiful site: it draws tighter each sunrise
squeezing at life, making it hard to breathe.
 
I observe each geometric shape and tone,
an ancient woodland weaving fingerprints on soil
and recoil to think of it, folded flat like a map.
 
Kate Young 
 
Kate Young lives in England and enjoys writing poetry, painting and playing the guitar, ukulele and mandolin. Her poems have appeared in various webzines, magazines, and chapbooks. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlet A Spark in the Darkness has been published by Hedgehog Press and her next pamphlet Beyond the School Gate is due to be published soon. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet.
 
**
 
What Do Birds Think?
 
funny isn’t it
containing the land
 
but
 
green is a fugitive
she jumps the walls
 
and
 
the cornfields
are envious of the sky
 
because
 
air is like sea
slipping through a hand
 
while
 
birds look down
and wonder
 
Marc Brimble
 
Marc lives in Spain and when he's not teaching English he likes drinking tea and wandering about
 
 
**
 
Near Elkhart
 
Under gauzy sunlight
I peer over the right
wing of the Cessna,
gaze at a patchwork
of rolling Amish farms
scrolled over Indiana
hillsides and valleys,
white farmhouses
surrounded by summer
fields of corn and barley,
plows pulled
by a seven-horse
hitch over hayfields,
those verdant acres
separated by crisscross
county roads where
gray buggies trot
to farmers markets
with fresh produce,
colorful quilts,
and baked goods--
a century-old lifestyle
preserved today.
 
Jim Brosnan
 
Dr. Jim Brosnan is the author of Driving Long Distance (2024) and Nameless Roads (2019). His poems have appeared in the Aurorean (US), Crossways Literary Magazine (Ireland), Eunoia Review (Singapore), Nine Muses (Wales,) Scarlet Leaf Review (Canada), Strand (India), The Madrigal (Ireland), and Voices of the Poppies (United Kingdom) and forthcoming in The Wild Word (Germany). He is a full professor at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI. Jim has also won numerous awards from the National Federation of Poetry Societies (US).
 
**
 
Flower Moon
 
it is the season of hunger.
the sky
hangs heavy, and the earth
rolls
gently
beneath it, rumbling
with the tunneling
of bees
wanting for a queen.
for a taste
of root and nectar and
fire.
i am young,
and have barely settled
into my own
wanting –
when she, a sweet
bear, reaches up into the blue-
black night and pulls
the honey
moon
down. i watch
with awe as she drags
its golden light between
her fingers, low
across the ground,
the green terrain
of a body criss-
crossed
with cropmarks
and crocus petals. heat,
peat and loam.
within moments the air
is filled
with the smell of it – smell
which is so close
to taste which is so,
so close
to freedom. freedom, the thrill
of breath
so sweet and thick
it sticks
to the roof of a mouth. the mouth,
a cave
hidden away
from the prying
eyes
of sun
and society. safe haven,
gasping. she gasps,
sweet bear, and i
catch the cavernous sound
of her
on my tongue. i gasp,
and she
splits
the echo
like honeycomb
between her
teeth.
 
Kimberly Hall
 
Kimberly Hall (she/her) is a queer and neurodivergent poet based in Southeast Texas, with a master's degree in behavioral science. Her work has appeared in several print anthologies, as well as in online publications such as Sappho's Torque, Equinox, and The Ekphrastic Review. She is currently working on her first collection.
 
**
 
Frenzied Photosynthesis    
 
At last – the optimist aspiration atlas –
a spectacle of frenzied photosynthesis,
run by a cryptic pragmatist – chlorophyll,   
a lover of the sun, a rival of the moon,
stamping its jade mark as if for fun.
But despite the all-green light
there are hiking rules on site
if you want to reach the dreamed side:
 
Never take the straight-branched path –
it is too traveled.
Never climb a tendril to the skies –
it is too imagined.
Never run after a sunbeam –
it is too transient.
Never peep over a leaf cliff –
it is too ambivalent.
Never look on shoots bright side –
it is too blinding.
 
Meandering tenderly-verdantly artless
lose yourself in this lush-streaming paradise,
spend your reason in that out-of-body experience
and get hyphened to the impending miracle –
blossoming – the whole point of optimist’s voyaging.
 
Though it is bud-trapped to the last moment –
you will instantly find it if you keep ambling
eyes-closed but open-minded  
for a suddenly-flashed
internally-synthesized dash.
How otherwise can you heed a blooming hush?
 
Ekateria Dukas
 
Ekaterina Dukas writes poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning. Her poems have often been hosted by The Ekphrastic Review and its challenges. Her poetry collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europa Edizioni 2021.   

**
 
Tending
 
The NICU hums a low tone of medical instruments and computer fans. I switch off the phototherapy bulb in my son’s incubator. He wears a miniature eye mask, a plastic tube snaked through his nostril to his stomach. Cords link his chest to machine. I unlatch and lift the fiberglass sidewall, scoop my hands underneath his warm body, gather him to my sternum. He stays asleep. I settle my sore pelvis into a wheeled chair in his corner of the ward, remove his eye mask. Bow my head to his hair and inhale.
 
He smells sweet, intoxicates me
like newly-turned earth, a fresh field
to sow my heart into. His tiny fingers
soft as moss, skin hued amber
from early arrival.
 
His fingerprints
are a maze, a path, a map
leading back to tended roots,
twisting through shade and sun,
plots of sweet corn, summer
squash, butterbeans and brassica.
 
The NICU doctors and interns begin their morning circuit, murmur in a cluster under the dimmed fluorescence. How-to and Don’t-do posters advise from the walls. A screen above me squiggles out vitals: oxygen, body temp, pulse. Silent numbers satisfy a nurse, who opens and closes doors, drawers, checks supply stock. Her sneakers squeak down the row of dozing infants. My son wakes, tilts his face upward. I bundle him closer.
 
His blue eyes, deeper than sky,
open wide, graze the gold-flecked forests
of mine.
 
We’re an olive branch, sweet-
grass, a lemon grove, a meadow
of dandelion, goldenrod, and clover.
 
We’re a newborn continent
unto ourselves.
 
Heather Brown Barrett
 
Heather Brown Barrett is an award-winning poet in southeastern Virginia. She mothers her young son and discusses all things literary with her writer husband. She is a member of Hampton Roads Writers, where she serves on the Advisory Board and the newsletter staff. She’s also a member and regular student of The Muse Writers Center. Her poetry has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Yellow Arrow Journal, Black Bough Poetry, OyeDrum Magazine, AvantAppal(achia), and elsewhere. Visit her website https://heatherbrownbarrett.com/
 
**
 
Green Wraiths
 
The watery green light
of a languid summer evening,
lingers in the silent attic,
filters through the skylight
onto the intestines of the house.
A ladder leads up to an exit
always barred and banned.
Lengths of silver piping wind
and coil, the sleeping serpent
in its own luscious green Eden.
A tall treasure chest
full of dead people's secrets,
faded into dusty obscurity,
decaying, rotting, skeletal.
Fragile playroom
for mice and spiders,
awaiting past owners
who float like dust,
motes caught
in a green silence.
 
Sarah Das Gupta 
 
Sarah Das Gupta is a retired teacher from Cambridge, UK who also taught in India and Tanzania. Her work has been published in many magazines in over 15 different countries.Among her interests are art, early music, parish churches, history and landscape.
 
**

The Three Sisters
 
Sown
in circles
seen
from above
yellow green
 
Maize
silky elegance
blades sharp
tongue
sweet
 
Beans
entwining
social 
climbing
azote lush
 
Squash
shady lady
leafy broad
earthily
moist
 
Family Planting
some 6000 years
&
nary
a rhubarb
 
Donna-Lee Smith
 
Donna-Lee Smith taught at McGill University (Faculty of Education) for a quarter century and often had the privilege of working in First Nations and Inuit communities, where she learned the ancient wisdom of companion planting the Three Sisters. 
 
1. Create a circular mound of rich soil
2. Plant Maize first; she grows tall, like a trellis
3. Next plant Beans; she climbs Maize, adding nitrogen to the soil
4. Third is Squash; her broad leaves shade the soil, keeping it moist.
 
**
 
Spring Creed
 
It is Spring again:
green and gold glamour
mirage the mundane.
 
It is Spring again:
sunshine alchemy, tree-rising sap
yellow roads, emerald cities.
 
It is Spring again:
tapestry of tuning
square to circle, but to bud.
 
It is Spring again:
hurrah of grasses, hallelujah of light,
hymn of begin.
 
It is Spring again:
breathe in green,
giddy the heart with hope.
 
It is Spring again:
turn self with earth,
map the way to yes. 
 
Siobhán Mc Laughlin
 
Siobhán Mc Laughlin is a poet and creative writing facilitator from Co. Donegal in Ireland. Her  poems have appeared numerous times before in The Ekphrastic Review. Her work has also been published in a selection of journals including The Honest Ulsterman, Poetry Village, The Waxed Lemon, Drawn to the Light Press and upcoming in Reverie Magazine. Twitter: @siobhan347 
 
**
 
My Dark Green World
 
There is nowhere to walk when everything is green,
I’m paralyzed to turn as I remain unseen.
 
Distant sunlight finds me like a small speck of star,
I have no hand to hold but wonder where you are.
 
Grass fills my senses as I try to calm my mind,
A small step to distract how I was left behind.
 
Voices taunt and murmur in this desolate place,
As cloth-covered eyes hide the salt tears on my face.
 
Corrie Pappas 
 
Corrie Pappas is a small business owner living outside Boston. Her work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review and she is the author of the children’s book, Come Along and Dream. 
 
**
 
We are a Green Palimpsest

Sometimes I come splashing spreading green paint 
Or greener vomit
I dig into the dirt          fingers feel so green
I sit at a table cut crepe paper        make origami cranes
They are fruit green parrots
I see one in a cage eager to maneuver language
Out of it onto the page
I sit at a table making paper collages & papier mache 
I squat at a garden’s back corner mixing browns & greens
I compost everything in my waste basket all my failed poems thrownaway salad leaves
Sometimes on my fingertips there’s umami
Sometimes I walk the shorelines around the green terrain
Scouting out seaweeds 
They are so funky
Green breezes from the Pacific billow in
Dawn’s margin between golden & blue weaves into the tapestry
I sit by a window composting light
Earth comes blooming
There are so few green flowers    but heliotropes open under my green hedge
The green roses feel unripe green in loving
But the first single-cell leaf was blue-green
Phytoplankton mosses ferns didn’t make gaudy kisses
What would it be like to be woven into the mysterious funkiness
Of a prehistoric forest I wonder when the incense was all brown & green
I sit by the hearth of earth watching its greenest fire leap and leap
And lick my face my eye my noseholes 
My hands are bleeding leaves into the earth
As I sit on my haunches in my back garden digging
Digging a new tapestry out every day
Planting & replanting
Calling nothing a weed
Today the first fresh buds of the year are bursting 
And rain falls like unraveled crepe
Behind the veil of my thirsty winter eyes
All is scratchy & green
I stand staring up at my yellowing ceiling my yellowing wallpaper 
(I know one type that stays evergreen like Amazon but I don’t want to breathe arsenic)
We like to color maps with green
Even where no blade of grass sneaks from concrete
Even when we’ve no time or energy
To plant a veggie garden on our balconies
To whisper to tender green grow grow beautiful & delicious
Sprout seeds scramble vine weigh us down with green marbles marvels
Oh tree tree tree I got hit on the head by a gargantuan pomelo
Even when we don’t want to wait till the spinach leaves are wilted
The broccoli is nicely braised or roasted 
To add superfoods to smoothies wheatgrass kale leaves seaweeds 
We’d like to drink our greens
I sit in scratchy city green spaces replanting uprooted weeds
It takes one oak & one linden to make a wood make a myth
When you read Metamorphoses the Genesis or better the Georgics
Each page is a perfectly patched green terrain
 
Lucie Chou
 
Lucie Chou is an ecopoet hiking and gardening in mainland China. An undergraduate English major, she has work published or forthcoming in Entropy, the Black Earth Institute Blog, Tiny Seed Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Transom, Tofu Ink Arts, Halfway Down the Stairs, and Slant: A Journal of Poetry. A debut collection, Convivial Communiverse, came from Atmosphere Press. In August 2023, she participated in the Tupelo Press 30/30 project where she fundraised for the indie press by writing one poem each day for a month. In spring 2024, she is doing exchange studies at UC Berkeley, where she explores the gay outdoors and works on a long poem that seeks to queer Erasmus Darwin’s The Botanic Garden.

Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. 

The prompt this time is The Sahara, by Gustave Guillaumet. Deadline is March 1, 2024. 

You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please.

The Rules

1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination.

2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF.

3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way.​
​​

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  GUILLAUMET CHALLENGE in the subject line.

6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. 

7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 

8. Deadline is midnight EST, March 1, 2024.

9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is.

10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline.

11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 

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

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

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

An Ordinary Day
                             

                                            "You've seen the refugees going nowhere,
                                             you've heard the executioner singing joyfully...

                                             Praise the mutilated world
                                             and the gray feather a thrush lost
                                             and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
                                             and returns."
                                                       Try To Praise The Mutilated World,
                                                                                     Adam Zagajewski
                                              
                                       
It was an ordinary day:      I saw the angel rise wearing handcuffs,
the black wall of forest trees     trimmed of individual identity

obstructing movement in the background.     I have dreamed
of fields where foliage wears a crown of saffron;     seasons

when an ideology of earth     clings like lost ideas to  a wind-
buffeted angel -- like children, words are     spirits of new life,

the harvest of the past.     So I believe I have held newborns
and watched the light illuminate a window;     read poems

by a professor, born in the Ukraine     where now war
mutilates the people, toppling cities;     crippling everything

but hope...     How slim the stalks are, this past we've harvested,
praying gun fire would grow silent; praying     we can hold on

to one another, tangled, as we are     in the leitmotif of clouds
where nothing guides the bare feet of an angel
                                                                                      toward the breath of dawn
                                                                                                      above the ground.

Laurie Newendorp

Laurie Newendorp's book, When Dreams Were Poems, explores the relationship between art and words.  Honoured multiple times by The Ekphrastic Challenge, she studied poetry in The University of Houston's creative writing program at a time when Adam Zagajewski's poem, "Try To Praise The Mutilated World," appeared between black covers as the last page in the New Yorker issued after 911.

​**

Dear Ekphrastic Challengees,

An inspiring ekphrastic challenge for you to start February 2024 with, this challenge is based on the encaustic art of Kelly Austin-Rolo. 

Kelly’s studio is based in Denver, CO, where I had the grand pleasure of meeting her, and of adoring the beauty of her artworks. She is an artist who is curious and open to learn about and work with all sorts of different media. As she states on her website https://kellyaustinrolo.com/ : “Every day brings something new,” and this was the energy and enthusiasm she showed in her atelier. 

I hope you will be properly prompted by Green Terrain (2019), and as Kelly mentions: “Green Terrain holds a special place and I would love to see and feel others' response to it”.

Thank you for submitting your pieces, I am looking forward to reading your writing. Thank you Kelly, for your art and permission, thank you Lorette, for being TER’s life force.

Be good,
Kate Copeland

**
​
Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. 

The prompt this time is Green Terrain, by Kelly Austin-Rolo. Deadline is February 16, 2024. 

You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please.

The Rules

1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination.

2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF.

3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way.​
​​

​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  AUSTIN-ROLO CHALLENGE in the subject line.

6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. 

7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 

8. Deadline is midnight EST, February 16, 2024.

9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is.

10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline.

11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 

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

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

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