​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 Eve, by Dyane Jackson. Deadline is March 14, 2025. 

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

The Rules

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

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

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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 JACKSON 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 14, 2025.

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

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

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

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

13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the  challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 
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​14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges!
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16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.

Entitled

                              "Isn't it rich
                                Are we a pair?       
                                Me here at last on the ground,
                                you in mid-air...

                                 Don't you love farce?
                                 My fault, I fear,
                                 Losing my timing this late in my career..."
                                             Stephen Sondheim,  Send In The Clowns


The black and white cross on canvas    is Untitled, mixed
with burlap's rough texture, splotched with red --    enough blood,

it was said by Lorca, to equal 300 roses;    or sangre spilled
in the Spanish Civil War.     In the mountains between Madrid

and Segovia, Robert Jordan's horse    is shot from beneath him,
and dying, he says goodbye    to Maria, his memory

of the grass    where their bodies were entwined
taken with him     though his life must end in Hemmingway's

fiction.     How near the lyricism of life 
is that of death:    Lorca shot by Franco's Fascist

firing squad in Viznar, Spain    the words of his gypsy
ballads lingering --    Green I love you greenly,

and green the branches.     Dali and Gala were already
in exile for safety;     they begged their friend, Lorca

to flee...but Robert Jordan    was dying, firing on the enemy;
and Maria -- young -- was left     clinging to passion

on the mountainside, entitled to have     what they
had shared, if briefly, on an unknown road    into the future,

days when the earth    could have been sparsely foliaged --
summer-bare as it was    when we drove to Granada.

There, in a moment of amazing beauty    the barren landscape
was surprised by The Alhambra --    its fountains an oasis, a Wonder

of the World (1 of 7 the guidebook said)    yet the sight of it
was so much more than words....    In my heart, I'd grieved for Lorca,

his fascination with the gypsies of his homeland    a living
pulse of life ...could such entitlement be ours    when we

could no longer be together    as the water from a fountain
cast a curl of diamonds;    and Lorca's simple "Song

of The Rider"    was my song as I sat beside you --
my husband who wasi driving;    and Lorca seemed so near

on his black pony    the moon fat and full, his saddlebags
filled with Spanish olives;    and for us, do you remember
                                                                                                           how precious
                                                                                                                were our children,
                                                                                                                      ripening with love and life --

Laurie Newendorp

Laurie Newendorp lives and writes in Houston.  The beauty and surreality of Lorca's words have long been a source of poetry she finds inspirational as in the first poem in her book, When Dreams Were Poems.  Robert Jordan and Maria were Hemingway characters who meet during the Spanish Civil War in For Whom The Bell Tolls.

​**

Skinny and Flimsy Work Horse, Almost Always Full of Bruises
 
Don Quijote called her Rosinante. Cervantes said: “He gave him this name because he thought it was the most appropriate for a gentleman.” And there rode the hidalgo Alonso Quijano, reader of romances of the chivalric sort, who imagines himself the caballero who is about to fight evil and defend his patria, his fatherland, with the help of SanchoPanza, his ignorant sidekick. And so Alonso Quijano becomes Don Quixote de la Mancha, knight in shiny armour, the only one who will fight the giants with the flailing arms. 
 
Salvador de Madariaga is telling us of the "Sanchifaction of Don Quixote and the Quixotizsation of Sancho Panza." Oh, would this be so today, when Rosinante has to carry two poor deluded souls battling windmills, and probably riding the poor beast to death.
 
Giants of your mind
Elongated lances
Dead horses
​
Rose Mary Boehm

Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as eight poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was several times nominated for a Pushcart and Best of Net. Her eighth book, LIFE STUFF,has been published by Kelsay Books (November 2023). A new manuscript is in the works. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/

​**

‘Til Then, Dear Girl:  a Sijo Sequence

I.
We will scratch a legacy across this teardrop tender sky,
fighting our oppressors armed with our resentment, fury, and hate,
defending freedom with the truth, as our mothers would have wanted.

II.
Standing tall, standing proud, standing at the edge,
we will rage resistance Psalms and blare death metal ballads of peace, 
giving and taking hits easily after all this abuse.

III.
There are people who never seem to rise to anything at all.
Others only know how to hurt for their own greedy benefit.
Some are hurt so much that they themselves learn how to hurt others well.

IV.
Be wary of them all, dear. Each poses their own unique threat, 
And no matter what they tell you, you are good and worthy and true.
So, we will defend you, just as generations before did us. 

V.
‘Til we are predictably battered, wearing our black and blue proud.
‘Til they have bloodied us as red as Eve allegedly did.
‘Til we waltz and we two-step and we salsa across these men’s graves.

​Rose Menyon Heflin

Rose Menyon Heflin is a poet, writer, and visual artist in Madison, Wisconsin, born and raised in rural Kentucky. She has had over 200 poems published on five continents, and her poetry has won multiple awards. One poem was choreographed and performed by a dance troupe, and an ekphrastic creative nonfiction piece was featured in the Chazen Museum of Art’s Companion Species exhibit. Her poetry has appeared in Deep South Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, Salamander Ink Magazine, San Antonio Review, and Xinachtli Journal (Journal X). An OCD sufferer since childhood, she strongly prefers hugging trees instead of people. 

**

​Rancher's First Date After a Long Time

My heartline and lifeline cross just here 
inside my glove, even if y’can’t see, 
or which one forks off–small splinter trickles away 
like the Colorado, won’t reach the Gulf anymore. 
I drank that water as a kid, splashed through troughs, 
rain ran down our backs, flicked off our eyelashes. 

Best soaking, a deluge, drops raced each other below, 
between shale and bedrock right here at our feet. 
I swear I could feel earth rumble 
above the water filt’ring–
–sounded like traveling across 
cattle guards at night with a truck full. 

We’d drill wood slats to the door 
where pushing was worst and get on board
–wore ear buds for the noise–head to slaughter 
god knows where since they closed the yards at KC, 
until we’d release ‘em under flood lights
–bawling, stumbling in dirt, through the chutes. 

I stayed once after auction, told my little girl 
I’d watch where they went, keep ‘em safe.
Has her own kids now, my bloodline, six generations. 

After the sale, they'd be done slippin' and fallin' 
on the concrete, hangin' over drains, drippin' so fast
–rain like that could recharge the Red. 
Blood smells like mined lead, y’know, 
sweet, so thick it’d make you sick, if y’let it. 
At least the cow excretions get hosed out first. 

Toughest gloves come from cattle. 
I won’t touch sheep leather. Too soft. 
Cowhide takes time to wear in
but can take a beating day in, day out, 
somethin' you can count on.

Lynn Axelrod

Lynn Axelrod's poetry appears in various journals and outlets; is anthologized; was featured in the San Francisco Chronicle; and is in a collection of the James Joyce Library, University College, Dublin. Her first chapbook, Night Arrangements, earned a Kirkus Review "Get it" verdict. Her second, Lotus Earth on Fire was published in 2024 by Finishing Line Press. She's been a community organizer for disaster readiness, reporter for a weekly newspaper, studio jewelry maker, environmental NGO staffer, and a lawyer.

​**

Blood-Bird Man
 
The figure looms over Enrique, blood-bird wingspan stretched over him from a white and black robe. Protection or condemnation? Death-inhaler or death-exhaler? Enrique doesn't know which, and he is too ill to care. Eyeless skulls stare at him. He wants to chuckle, for how can a hollow where an eye once was be capable of stare? Or is each of these crevasses an abyss in the fabric of life through which he must now pass?
 
He hears mumbles of an ancient tongue he cannot comprehend. Blood-bird man presses on his chest with the lightness of feathers. Enrique’s breathing quickens at first and then relaxes into a lullaby rhythm his mother might once have hummed. His pain dissipates. All that remains is the melody of breath and the flapping of wings. He falls into a deep sleep.
 
When he awakes, the village shaman announces, “He is well!” The shaman’s robes are now all white. The ground is littered with red feathers and black rags.  

Barbara Krasner

Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks and three novels in verse. Her work has also appeared or is forthcoming in The Ekphrastic Review, MacQueen's Quinterly, Nimrod, Cimarron Review, Paterson Literary Review, and other journals. Visit her website at barbarakrasner.com.

**

Death Was Different Then

Death was different then,
more approachable.
We could call him down if we needed to, and I did.

The writing was on the wall;
after days of seeing skulls in every rock’s shadow,
I knew which way I was headed.
I went out dressed for Death in my best burlap--
in the old colors he knows--
chalk-white and clay-red and the black of tarpits and aurochs--

drew X’s to mark my spot
(nice and obvious; I was only doing this once).
Take me, take me, I said, but in Death’s language,
which at that time was common
(and easy enough, monosyllabic),
and opened my arms wide for his embrace,
and just like that, he was at my back,
like a wind, like a wish, like a wailing bird,
lifting me up;
I never saw his face.
I heard a sound like the ripping of a great fabric
as he tore me away from the earth--
 
I still hear it.

Amber Burke​

Amber Burke grew up in North Dakota and graduated from Yale and the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. Now she teaches writing and yoga at UNM-Taos. Her creative work can be found in magazines including The Sun, Quarterly West, and Swamp Pink. Her yoga writing appears in Yoga International and Yoga Journal. 

**

Painted Moth
 
It was flying around that evening
Attracted to the table lamp light
Set up to give a pale white glow
As I was spray painting a canvas
With acrylic creams and browns
As an untitled abstract impression
Capturing a mood I’d felt all day
A confused moth, fluttered past
Straight across my line of sight
Spattered with paint, it tumbled
As if shot down by ack-ack fire
Landing clumsily upon the table
Now static in the lightbulb glare
Clearly in shock and unmoving
With paint drying over its wings
Almost now an alien camouflage
Hidden patches on a muddy field
Yet providing me new inspiration
My artwork with an altered view

Howard Osborne

Howard has written poetry and short stories, also a novel and several scripts. With poems published online and in print, he is a published author of a non-fiction reference book and several scientific papers many years ago. He is a UK citizen, retired, with interests in writing, music and travel.

**

Hidden Beneath
 
Here below turbulent waves deep
In the depths, a great beast floats
Dark blue water camouflaged, a true
Dennison of the deep: whale, shark?
Echoes of human manufacture- a sub?
Nearly invisible, painted blood red
 
Brine can’t wash away memories of ships
Entering fishing grounds, scaring life till
None can survive the empty sea, under waves
Ebbed in tides, no place left to hide from
Attacks, harpoon and net, can never forget
That humans are a danger to all sea life
Hidden beneath, the plight just to survive
 
Julie A. Dickson
 
Julie A. Dickson write poetry from prompts including art, nature and music. Her work varies between life and teen issues, environment and memories. Dickson's poems appear in over 70 journals worldwide, including Girl Goddess, Blue Heron Review, Lothlorien and The Ekphrastic Review. She has served a a guest editor on several publications and as a past poetry board member.​

**

Manolo's Vision

Etched deep into the angled edge
of the mountain's sheer rock face -
two long bones, the white plate
of pelvis, an ochre red smear
tinted by some ancient plant
or berry: history of violence.

In Altamira, sketched men run on
stick legs, arms extend into spears,
sharp deep strokes in the charcoal
walls of the cave, bison flee, fall:
the same ochre red patches of blood:
ancient history of violence, of survival.

Laura L. Hansen

Laura Hansen is a Stevens Poetry Manuscript Prize Winner for Midnight River. Her most recent books are The Night Journey: Stories and Poems published by River Place Press and Waiting Rooms: My Breast Cancer Journey in Poems. Laura is a former Independent Bookseller who is passionate about the power of words to convey and connect. She is a Summa Cum Laude graduate of Concordia College in Moorhead, MN and has attended workshops at The Loft Literary Center, Madeline Island School of the Arts and elsewhere. Laura's other passions include whiskery dogs, life by the river, reading and puzzles.

**

Baba Yaga’s[1] Winter Forest                                                                           

In these woods my hut balances
on the feathered talons of owls. 
Men roar past on oil-fed contraptions, stain 
the snow black. My hut realigns itself, agile
 
as the barred owl hunting among the trees
and as silent. My camouflage is birch bark 
siding. Only the deer know I am 
here. They taught me how to find
 
the vanishing point. Showed me the lone woman. 
The other women stick to the road, gobbling in flocks
like the turkeys. Sometimes the turkeys scrabble round
my house for beetles and beech nuts. The one
 
that plumps my stew pot isn’t missed
by the clucking flock. They don’t know the spell
for silence. The lone woman sidles close
on webbed wooden feet when the drifts are soft.
 
I don’t feed the fire so there’s no smoke. Huddle 
by the cooling stove. Even the Pileated woodpeckers 
flatten their red crests, black and white blending 
with the birches. 
 
The woman seeks me in her dreams:  wants a spell 
to save the trees. Last summer the wind boiled
a funnel cloud through my forest, snapping trunks 
of burly maples, muscled blue beech. Like twigs. 
 
Tore the feathered capes of White Pines. 
Scattered bird nests. Eggs, shards of blue sky, leaking.
That wind had iron teeth and claws. I burrowed
into the river bank, lived with the kingfisher all summer. 
 
The woman’s dreams haunt me: she found 
a blue feather from a shadow jay on the snow.
Like Lucy of the candle crown[2], she wanders
the forest path on the longest night, searching
 
for her lost sight. I told her to gouge out her eyes
so she would always walk in darkness. I hide
beneath its heavy duvet. If the lone woman finds me 
I will eat her heart.
 
Kate Rogers

[1] Baba Yaga is an Eastern European forest witch from ancient Slavic myth.
[2] St. Lucy is a saint of Nordic countries. Unlike most saints, she does not have her own day, but does have a night. At ceremonies the young woman chosen to be Lucy wears a crown of candles. She is believed to bring back the light. Some Lucy stories describe how she gouged out her eyes to discourage a suitor.

Kate Rogers won first place in the subTerrain magazine 2023 Lush Triumphant Contest for her five-poem suite, “My Mother’s House.” She is co-author of the chapbook Homeless City with Donna Langevin. Kate’s latest poetry collection is The Meaning of Leaving. She is the Director of Art Bar, Toronto’s oldest poetry reading series. More at: katerogers.ca/

**

Flatout Sacked 

A not-so-subtle exhale.  
Like seeing the coin toss 
flop from its edge. Like the replay 
of your favorite quarterback

crushed under three-hundred 
pounds of defensive tackle.  
Not even bones--ribs, knuckles--
retain shape. The Xs and Os.  

Mostly the Oh’s turning gray.  
The blood-red of the midfield logo
permanently smashed 
into the flank.  All that’s left 

after the last whoosh--the exiting puff
of life-giving breath, the extinguishing 
of light and memory--is one 
unblinking eye.

Todd Sukany

Todd Sukany <[email protected]>, a two-time Pushcart nominee, lives in Pleasant Hope, Missouri, with his wife of over forty years. His work has appeared in Ancient Paths, Cantos: A Literary and Arts Journal, Cave Region Review, The Christian Century, Intégrité: A Faith and Learning Journal, and The Ekphrastic Review. Sukany authored Frisco Trail and Tales as well as co-authored four books of poetry under the title, Book of Mirrors, with Raymond Kirk. A native of Michigan, Sukany stays busy running, playing music, loving three children, their spouses, seven grandchildren, caring for two rescued dogs, and four rescued cats.

​**

Bloodletting 
  
after we abandoned our preordained selves  
I couldn't remember your face. a decade of painting portraits,  
and then you, the negative space. 

when we were children they told us Jesus  
was stumbling to Calvary under the cross and a woman broke  
from the crowd to wipe his brow with her veil. later, blood  
marked the cloth in his image.  
 
after we met again I tried to claw you 
from the red dark  
behind my eyes. 
 
the parish priest carried me from the sacristy— 
my son, you have been blessed. he kissed 
the boreholes in my face before leaving me  
on the cathedral steps. he said he would tell you 
 
where to find me, but once his psalms had finally corroded 
I felt my way up to the apse and you fell from me 
in hymns and clots and hallowing rust.   

Lalini Shanela Ranaraja

Lalini Shanela Ranaraja makes art in a wilderness of places, most recently Katugastota (Sri Lanka), Rock Island (Illinois) and the California Bay Area. She has written about defiant women, red-tailed hawks, best beloveds, mothertongues and luminous worlds for The Ekphrastic Review, Wildness, Hunger Mountain, Strange Horizons and others. Discover more of her work at www.shanelaranaraja.com.

**

A Raw Poetics
 
What is this animal    Manolo
that stalks your canvas   
pushes past
the frame    walks  
its awkward limbs
towards me
 
as if something must be 
accounted for
 
of what did you dream
in that café with Tapiés
those hours    exchanging notes
on cardboard scraps
in your scrawling écriture
 
some new aesthetic    a raw art
discard of rules of tone 
or touch    conventions even 
of beauty    even Goya 
was not enough
 
you headed instead to alleyways    
a collector now
burlap    tar    rope    sand
torn jute you sewed into whole cloth    
scumbled
with your gesture    primal
disquieted    
your viscous clumps of paint 
weighing heavy
upon that animal
 
a raw poetics you said   
to salvage the dark of history    
bear witness
to despair
 
but oh how history repeats repeats repeats
itself    Manolo
the relentless beat of a drum
 
your animal walks its awkward limbs 
towards me    
as if something must be
accounted for.
 
Victoria LeBlanc

Victoria LeBlanc is an artist, writer and curator.  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.  Recent poetry collections include Hold (2019) and River | Riven (2024), the latter accompanied by the exhibition A path walks quietly on its own.  www.victorialeblancart.com
 
**

​​Untitled, No Date

A milch cow, flayed, left hanging from a wall
Where thick black dust’s cut open with a scrawl
Not much unlike a swastika, although 
Death’s possibilities are endless. so
Just call it what you like: Pandora’s box;
Life-saving drugs left rotting on the docks;
Earth’s creatures used and starved, hung out to dry:
A prize for dicing soldiers by and by;
For we in all our godly zeal require
A living testament to knife and wire,
A sacrament of blood, a sacred cow
Slaughtered to prove sheer wealth is holy now.
Does art do this?  Picasso shook his head.
I’m not to blame for Guernica, he said.

Ruth S. Baker

Ruth S. Baker has published in a few online magazines.  She has a particular love for animals and visual art.

**

I make peace with my ghosts

i
all I ever got was glimpses, there in the corners of my life -
after-images, haunting as skulls, ghosts of other existences

sometimes they hinted at spilled blood, theirs and others,
often it was about black dirt thick like loam, corrupted,

and there was ash, so much ash leaving dirty smears
on crumpled white sheets that spread like waves, like wings

ii
when the ghosts stopped appearing I felt hollow, deserted -
had I just imagined the words of those whispering voices?

those conversations with them had mattered even when it felt 
like touching cobwebs and shadows, my mind's hollow echoing

was I really just making them up, talking to past versions of myself?
had I warped the rough fabric to make it fit my own needs?

iii
when they'd first appeared I yearned for silence from the ghosts
not realising how much I'd miss them when they were gone

as the absence grew I looked, I searched, I pored over signs
I realised how much they'd become part of me, our shared history

now I have my own story of why they came, why they had to leave
I am at peace with my version of them.  They leave me alone

Emily Tee

Emily Tee is a writer from the UK Midlands.  She particularly enjoys ekphrastic writing and has had pieces published in The Ekphrastic Review challenges previously, and elsewhere online and in print.

**

To Manolo Millares Regarding Untitled

How apt that jute would be avowed
as fit embrace of final shroud
to keep the worst of beasts at bay
from lifeless flesh as feasts of prey

and threats to those who left survive
by reason not to be but thrive
and also leave their conscious thought
as skill and conscience better wrought

to destine aim becoming course,
triumphant even in remorse,
that leaves its mark on darkened walls
as proof of hope in cryptic scrawls

that you revere in jute again
connecting is to long has been.

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.

​**

Cowed

When your artwork is abstract or surreal,
people bombard you with questions. 
What is it? Why did you paint 
it like THAT? Do you make any art 
that is, you know, PRETTY? 
Potential buyers go nuts when I don’t title 
a painting. (I do in my head, but they 
get in the way of sales.)

Most of my audience is mystified why I
would specialize in cow art. I don’t tell them
I grew up on a dairy farm. I fell in love
with cows, but hated the matter of fact
attitude of my parents and brothers.
Four years truly isn’t the natural life span 
of a cow. I fell apart every time one 
of our Bessies or Buttercups disappeared 
from our barn.

Mama wanted me to skip college 
and work at the dairy. She wasn’t about
to pay for more schooling. So what did I do?
I approached an abstract artist. He moved
to our farming community to paint 
in peace. 

I offered to assist him by stretching canvases,
answering phones, doing what I could to help.
In exchange, he paid me minimum wage 
and taught me most of what I know about art.
It didn’t hurt that I’m a decent cook either. 
He even let me squeeze in classes
at the local art institute. 

It wasn’t long before I was noticed. 
My artist was kind to mix my canvases 
with his in the gallery. I began to make money, 
win contests, and best of all, bought my own 
small pasture/summer workshop space. 

Three or four sweet cows get to live out 
their full lives with me and a colony 
of cats. See that russet blot on this canvas?
That belongs to my Millie. No cows 
are ever harmed in the name of art.

Alarie Tennille

Alarie Tennille was a pioneer coed at the University of Virginia, where she earned her degree in English, Phi Beta Kappa key, and black belt in Feminism. She has now lived more than half her life in Kansas City. Alarie received the first Editor’s Choice Fantastic Ekphrastic Award from The Ekphrastic Review, and in 2022, her latest book, Three A.M. at the Museum, was named Director’s Pick for the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art gift shop.
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**

Building Bridges, Not Walls
  
I.
burlap noun
: a coarse heavy plain-woven fabric usually of jute or hemp 
used for bagging and wrapping and in furniture and linoleum 
manufacture [Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary]
 
II.
Worn by the prophets in solidarity with the suffering, sackcloth 
served as a metaphor for God’s work. 
 
III. 
Incorporated within the paintings of Millares, it symbolized 
the persistence of the human spirit, represented the resilience 
of humanity. 
 
IV. 
Like the prophets and artists before us, will you build bridges, 
support all people in the figurative weave and unity of burlap?

​Jeannie E. Roberts

Jeannie E. Roberts is a Midwesterner with roots in Minnesota and Wisconsin. She is the author of several books, including The Ethereal Effect - A Collection of Villanelles (Kelsay Books, 2022). On a Clear Night, I Can Hear My Body Sing is forthcoming from Kelsay Books (2025). She is an Eric Hoffer and a two-time Best of the Net award nominee. She finds joy spending time outdoors and with loved ones.

**

Collage: chalk on blackboard, paper bags, dark chocolate, and the red paint risk of disapproval
 
In Adam's world of quantum physics, observation can bring things into being.

Like us.    

I observed him at the grocery store where I work, gently bagged his peaches as I rang him through. He noticed me at a coffee shop downtown and waved. In the park, we discovered we both had golden retrievers. 

I said, "Your Niels Bohr is cute." 

He said, "Your Goldie is cuter."

After that, we laughed and touched, and when we began the silly "You hang up first."—"No, you hang up." I moved in with him.
 
It's been a month now. None of my friends and family know.   
 
"Cindy, you are in a superposition," says Adam one night in bed. "You and I will not change other realities." Realities like Marg and I, Elliot and I., my daughter Tessa and I. "It'll be plus, not minus." 

I kiss him for that.

He kisses me back. "Tell them I have a quantum property called strangeness."

No, they won't get it.   
  
What will they get? That forever-single Cindy is cohabitating (Adam's word) with a professor of physics, a science man from the fancy-schmancy university on the hill.

Adam says, "Hypothesise. How might your family react?" 
  
Marg. My bestie for thirty years. She'll mumble as the surprise computes, will grab her phone and look up quantum physics, then crack a crooked smile. Something funny is coming. Something like Adam is my atom. 

"Like it?" I ask.

He does. 

High school science was boring and confusing; nothing but Cs and Ds. I don't understand much of what Adam says, but do try to apply it.  

"Marg is a positive proton."

Adams nods as he fiddles with my nightie.

"She'll be happy for us and will want to know when I knew." 

Adam props himself up on a pillow. "Knew what, specifically?"

"When you were the one."  

He cocks a bushy eyebrow. 

"You told me I was a charm quark." Sounded sweet, whatever it is.    

Apparently, the randomness of molecules in the human brain suggests we don't have free will. 

Elliot, my negatively charged younger brother. When he finds out about us, he'll agree. Will mansplain that I sure as hell don't because I'm smitten and at, snort, fifty-nine. "Blah-blah ridiculous to get into a common-law entanglement blah-blah." 

Says Adam, "Well, I have asked you to marry me. Will repeat." He throws back the blankets and, in pyjamas covered with equations, plunks down on one creaky knee beside the bed. "Tomorrow is Valentine's Day." 

He takes my hand. 

"A surprise wedding! Let's invite your friend and your brother over. Tessa is already coming." 

Tessa. Our annual mother-daughter party is tomorrow.

"We'll wed in front of them in the living room or on the patio." 

Oh, God. 

I pull Adam back into bed, play with the numbers on his jammies. "Dunno, Love." 

"Why not?" 

When Tessa was seven, her father left and a new universe—such a hard one—began. It's been just her and I ever since. 

And ever since, Valentine's Day has been our day. We give each other roses. We have Marry Me Chicken and watch sappy romances, sigh that we'll both find The One someday. Always thought my beautiful girl, now nearly thirty-two, would've been the first.  

"I can't. I can't shock Tessa with a wedding." 

"Valentine's Day should be ours," grumbles Adam. 

Don't know how to answer, so I don't. "I'll tell her about us tomorrow."

Adam perks up. Advice comes as easily to him as formulae. I bet he fills blackboards when teaching.
Serve soothing chamomile tea. 

Serve dark chocolate. It can ease anxiety. 

Become the detached transmitter of information, the "Alice" of his quantum cryptography experiments. Tessa will be the "Bob", the receiver. So as not to be "Eve", the theoretical eavesdropper, Adam will leave the house before Tessa arrives.

One look into my girl's brown eyes and I'll screw everything up, confuse her so badly she'll blurt, "Huh? There's an Alice and some guy named Bob mixed up with you and this Adam? OMG, Mum."

Shudder. I need much simpler. "What about telling her you fell into my lap and I fell into yours?"

Adam drums his fingers on the sheets. "But is gravity compatible with quantum physics?"

Slowly, I say what I never have about his science: "I do not care." 

Adam's mouth twitches. 

I tell him I want Tessa to hug me, say she's so glad I've found someone and holler where the hell is he anyway because she wants to meet him, warn him that he better be damn good to me. Or else.   
 
Adam blinks-blinks. 

"Yeah, Tessa can be tough." 

This Valentine's Day might be red and heated. Messy for him.

Adam flops back on his pillow. Although I know he knows he kinda did, my professor of physics mumbles, "Nobody said this was going to be easy."

Karen Walker

Karen Walker (she/her) writes short in a low basement in Ontario, Canada. Her recent work is in or forthcoming in Exist Otherwise, antonym,  Mythic Picnic, Misery Tourism, and Does it Have Pockets.     

The Ekphrastic Review is thrilled to have the incredible Alexis Rhone Fancher as this challenge's guest editor and artist! A big welcome to Alexis, who is known for her widely published photography and for many amazing books, including Erotic, The Dead Kid Poems, Enter Here, Brazen, Junkie Wife, and more. You can visit her site here: https://www.alexisrhonefancher.com/.

**

Dear Ekphrastic Readers and Writers,

I have long been a fool for ekphrastic poems. Some visual artists are adept at creating art that allows the viewer to enter the art, make themselves a part of it and then write about it. Such works of art tease me, even dare me to step inside. Edward Hopper is one such artist. So much empty space in his canvases. Leonora Carrington is another painter who dazzles me. And occasionally, a photograph of mine seems to tempt me as well, which led me to create DUETS, a collaboration between myself and my long-time editing/creating partner, poet Cynthia Atkins. We wrote to my photos over a one-year period, and realized we had a book, which was published in 2022, by Harbor Editions.

It’s always a pleasure to be published in The Ekphrastic Review. Over the past few years they’ve published several of my ekphrastic poems. I’m a poet, writer, art lover and also a photographer, and there’s so much convergence in these pages that speaks to me. I’m delighted to be a guest editor with my own photo, one which I hope will invite you to enter my desert landscape, and then write about your journey. I look forward to reading your poems and stories.

Alexis Rhone Fancher

**

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 Deserted Highway, Mojave Desert, by Alexis Rhone Fancher. Deadline is February 28, 2025. 

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

The Rules

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

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

3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way.​ Scroll down to donate $5CAD (about $3.75 USD).

4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.

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

5.Include FANCHER 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 28, 2025.

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

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

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

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

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

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