​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 Untitled, by Andrea Bogdan. Deadline is March 13, 2026. 

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 BOGDAN 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 13, 2026.

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.

Editor's Note:

A big thank you to Beth Daley and our friends at Europeana for providing the image for this challenge. If you haven't already visited Europeana, discovery this amazing repository of images, artifacts, and documents by clicking here: https://www.europeana.eu/en. It is a haven for ekphrastic writers seeking inspiration, as well as for research into art, science, archeology, and much more.

We had a tremendous response to this unique artwork. Thank you to everyone who wrote and submitted work. it is always amazing to see how many directions a single artwork can inspire ekphrastic creativity. Our heartfelt congratulations to those writers selected. Please support our writers by sharing their work on your FB page, etc. 

love,
​Lorette

Blue Đào Nguyễn

**

​nước : a country & water

a body of water
as
a bird
forms
watch
it
take
a dive
take
the
heel
of a horned
beast
follow it
why
do
all
roads
lead
back
home
what
beast
cut 
your
tongue
oh
river
salmon
swim
up stream
tell me
about your
heaven
what is
the sound
of god
& country.

Blue Đào Nguyễn

Blue Đào Nguyễn (IG: @blue.ngu) is a Vietnamese-Teochew (潮州話) non-binary lesbian poet, artist, and organizer. Their work, inspired by cartography and Vietnamese architectural symbolism, explores grief, prayer, and livelihood through poetry, oral history, and traditional Viet woodworking & fibre art, using organic materials. Material as altar : Poetics as prayer. Author of Hey Siri, What Time is it in Vietnam? (GameOverBooks, 2025) and an Associate Editor at Iron Horse Literary Review, their work is featured in Foglifter, Palette Poetry, & more. They’re a fellowship/scholarship/residency recipient of Kundiman, LAMBDA Literary, Fine Arts Work Center. More of their work can be found at bluenguyen.com.

**

Under the Bandana

That's not my hair. Nor Medusa's fanged locks or Sylvia's Plath's plait that her mother kept. It's not pigs' intestines or some sinew of roadkill carried off by scrawny black vulture. Likewise, it's not old flaky rope belonging to a schooner's mast nor net for lobster pots. It's not a wig, synthetic or natural, that affixes with glue. It looks nothing like golf grass seeds waiting sprout. It's not taut like guitar, violin or harp strings. It's not wispy and willowy as if it were smoke. It's hardly ribbon-soft, nor chocolate velvet. That's not my hair. It is but scar tissue and dried blood strands: the remnants of where a Phoenix rose. 

Bayveen O'Connell

Bayveen O'Connell is an Irish writer who is inspired by art and mythology. She loves sun holidays, Halloween, the gothic, and Bowie. Writing is her lifeblood.

**

Sepulcra
 
On the surface it all seems white and black
                 but underneath the shadows don't match
 
A disconnect between time now and time past
                 a delay buried among rumours and facts
 
As fumes rise from smoke smouldering stacks
                 forgotten feelings float on flakes of ash
 
Dissipating what once was into the abstract
                 on pyres of dead questions left unasked
 
So, restrain the catapults’ swing-tossed attacks
                 and weigh the risks of enduring impacts
 
Because conditions we conceive as clearly intact
                 will one day blend into grey that won't last

Brendan Dawson

Brendan Dawson is an American born writer based in Italy.  He writes from his observations and experiences while living, working, and traveling abroad. Currently, he is compiling a collection of poetry and short stories from his time in the military and journey as an expat.

**

Five Rings of Unity

They sampled dozens of designs─ 
overlapping black and white squiggles,
patterns with rainbow curlicues,
then squares, triangles, octagons.

None roared international athleticism 
or sufficiently honoured “best of the best”
in cooperative competition spirit,
all failed to hail ability over country

until the French baron scribbled
multicoloured circles on stationery.
He might have just been doodling
but his scribbling lit a creative ideal,

blue, yellow, green, black, red rings
on white to represent unity among
the five inhabited parts of the globe:
Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania,

with the Americas joined as one.
It appears as early as 1914, influencers
from around the world recognized the prudence
of harmony between next-door neighbours.

Elaine Sorrentino

Elaine Sorrentino, author of Belly Dancing in a Brown Sweatsuit (Kelsay Books, 2025) has been published in journals such asQuartet Journal, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Gyroscope Review, Sparks of Calliope, Poetry Porch, Ekphrastic Review, and Haikuniverse. Communications Director at South Shore Conservatory in Hingham, Ma, she is facilitator of the Duxbury Poetry Circle.

**

Evolution to Infinity 
 
Spirals of all Life
Nietzsche's eternal return
In evolution
 
Being connected
With our close and far siblings
In warm unity
 
Allied together
In a peaceful harmony
To Infinity
 
Jean Bourque

Jean lives in Montreal. Before reading Lora Dolphin's poem, "Staying with the Trouble," published in the latest issue of Ekphrastic Challenges (We Are All Eve), Jean didn't know what a rensaku was. He liked this poetic style so much that he tried to write one himself.

**

Loopy De Loop 

Looking back an old woman feels loops in her gut, the going round and coming back to what looks like an old place under a shifted moon. She ran circles through tangles of a shadowed wood. Backtracked here and there. Sees tread marks of the black wheels on the death car; ski-slides in powder snow coming home to a waiting door. Her skates carved spirals on ice. Repurposed yarn falls to her feet where a kitten plays, snarling the gray. The embroidered rainbow on her travel-worn parka unravels, arc of justice active-wear failure. A possible, often energetic, weave of opposites winds down, ties together in her memory even if no one else sees how.  

Tricia Knoll

Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet whose 10th book of poems, about aging, Gathering Marbles, comes out from Fernwood Press in July 2027. Meanwhile, she laces up her running shoes to try to run a mile when she's 80 and writes primarily prose poems now. 

**

​The Importance of Being Harnessed
 
This is a cutting edge story
concerning a starry myth
that was about to be fit
as a silver lining of a cloud
but was flopping too much out
and had to be edited three times around
as the cloud was also too fugitive
and never stopped shifting perspective
overshadowing or revealing too much
of the silver lined spell,
basically, a work from editor’s hell,
yet at one point they were unclipped
and dropped down to earth
but in that splitting moment
of falling to a totally unknown
realistic calling
they instinctively kept hugging
to the last second of hitting ground,
finally, harnessed in togetherness
they were saved from drifting alone
into oblivion.
Found on the road
dotingly kept here
in their original concord,
by Schoenholtz.
 
By Faith, if your mind
is not in concord with the heart,  
you will miss heaven
just for a foot and a half.
By ancient belief,
a special harness
between ring-finger
and pulsating hub
keeps sweet sparks at hand.
On the other hand,
modern science attests
that your double helix
harnesses all your molecules
with the one and only
acid of selfhood:
here you are –   
sweet and sour –
facing your hour.
 
So, put your ring on,
let your hair down
and dance your heart around
to the edge of your dear
harnessed realness
faced by silver providence:
there you are –
sweet and sound –
myth-rebound.
 
Ekaterina Dukas
 
Ekaterina Dukas writes poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning. Her poems have often been honoured by TER and its Challenges. Her collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europe Edizioni.  

**

Stripes
 
She awakens with a cough and sees yarn littering the living room. Stripes. She’d flopped on the couch, exhausted. And while she was napping, he shredded the scarf she’d just finished. Hours of knit 1, purl 1, demolished in mere minutes.

“Stripes, you bad cat!” She hurls his squeaky rat, aiming high and wide, and it flobs off the wall. He’s already out the cat-flap, a blur of fur and fury. 

She coughs again, raw, then bends to gather the tatters. This bit is spotted with what looks like daubs of...blood? Yuck. No salvaging it. Out it goes. 

Oh, Stripes. She sighs, chuckles. Such a silly cat, of course he doesn’t know any better.

*
Underhome place. Warm down here. 

Cleaning. Cleaning hurt. 

Black and white and gray thing hurt Mama. Covered face, Mama gasping. 

Stripes caught. Stripes shredded. 

Stripes is good cat. 

Tracy Royce

Tracy Royce is a writer and poet with work recently appearing in Brilliant Flash Fiction and The Ekphrastic Review, and forthcoming in Heavy Feather Review, Hot Flash Literary, and Best Microfiction (2026). Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, a Touchstone Award, and a Pushcart Prize. Find her on Bluesky.

**

Wir Bewegen Uns

Wir drei stehen in der Küche, wo mein Mann, immer noch geärgert über meine chutzpah, die Scheidung einzureichen, nimmt einen Hammer und schlägt auf den Toaster ein, den ich seit der Universität habe und während wir uns bewegen, unser zweijähriges Kind schreit, Nein, Vati! Das gehört Mutti! and sein Vater schwingt ihn, schleudert ihn in die Schränke, während wir drei in der Küche stehen wir bewegen uns wie in einem Tanz: Ich, weiß, schockiert, mein Kind, grau, verletzt und verwirrt, und der Mann, schwartz vor Wut, während wir uns bewegen, einst ein Grisaille-Porträt, nun jetzt ist jeder von uns ein Bestandteil, während wir uns bewegen 


*

We Are Moving
​
The three of us stand in the kitchen, where my husband, still pissed off by my chutzpah in filing for divorce, takes a hammer and strikes the toaster I’ve had since university, and while we are moving our two-year-old screams No, Daddy! That belongs to Mommy!, and his father swings him, hurls him into the cabinets, while the three of us stand in the kitchen, while we are moving like in a dance: I, white, shocked; my child, gray, injured and bewildered; and the husband, black with rage, while we are moving, once a grisaille portrait, now each of us a component, while we are moving

Barbara Krasner

Barbara Krasner majored in German as an undergrad and sometimes writes in this language in response to art. She is the author of ten poetry collections, including the ekphrastic Poems of the Winter Palace (Bottlecap Press, 2025), The Night Watch: Poems (Kelsay Books, 2025), Insomnia: Poems after Lee Krasner (Dancing Girl Press, 2026), and the forthcoming The Wanderers (Shanti Arts, 2026). Dubbed the Ekphrastic Warrior, she lives and teaches in New Jersey. Visit her website at www.barbarakrasner.com.

**

into thin air

the navigable world grows
ever smaller--the ground less
level—the transformations
more rapid every day—what
 is this urge to move, to
spin, to turn until my
dizziness becomes
dance, to immerse
myself in what
was once empty,
to fill the center
of myself with
distant galaxies
something
impossibly
beyond?

Kerfe Roig

Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Her poetry and art have been featured online by Feral, Pure Haiku, Collaborature, The Chaos Section Poetry Project, and The Ekphrastic Review, and published in The Anthropocene Hymnal, and The Polaris Trilogy.  Follow her explorations at https://kblog.blog/.

**

​The Museum for Sepulchral Culture in Kassel

Museums are mostly graveyards
It is easy to take things from the dead
Far easier than from the living
I have walked into tombs and through them in galleries
Burial rites on the big screen
The immersive experience of someone else’s sepulchre.
Lay my body in the museum
Let the contents of my tomb be itemized and labelled,
with gift-shop replicas available by the cafe.
Let all the ticket-buying world see what I have left them.
It's a vulgar sort of archaeology:
Shovels snaking down
In a race to the bottom of the grave.
How long must I be buried
Before you can rob my tomb and call it research?
Whatever way you look at it:
You’re digging.

M.A. Jessie

The elusive M.A. Jessie is a mountain-dwelling species of writer, known for long periods of hibernation and a particular affinity for science fiction, fantasy, and speculative literature.

**

(Non)Stress Test

As kids,
they made us
recite from memory

in front of the whole class,
with flushed faces 
and quivering lips,

the prayer of St. Michael
the archangel,
protect us in battle, we’d proclaim

protect us from the wickedness 
and snares of the devil, we exhorted
thrust Satan into hell, we yelled.

But somehow, nature finds a way, 
when warm air lurks on the ground,
leaking from the grates of the underworld

and swirls with the cold
truth of cumulus clouds,
those foreshadowed devices 

that birthed us a summer vortex
during a Midwest winter,
when hell thawed the earth.

They say 
it's not the wind itself that harms
but the shrapnel that spits and spews

lawn chairs as ornaments on evergreens, 
trusses flying from rooftops
through the neighbour's front door.  

But we were trapped together 
at the apex of a hospital,
a safe and dangerous place

when the sirens blared. 
You, harnessed to a chair
like fragile cargo

8 months pregnant
with what could be our first born
but far from our first hope.

We had the shrapnel as evidence:
glass shards pierced our lungs, wood splinters
pricked our frontal lobes, rusty mufflers 

clogged our ventricles. We waited
for your first contraction, the monitor
signed life in sleepy slumber.

You sucked on sugar cubes to arouse 
the unborn, make her dance on your bladder,
stomp an Irish dance on your stomach. 

Come on, sweet child. Make that heart sing
in soprano. Draw out some long, slow breaths
in mommy’s womb. Teach us how to step into the light

as gregarious as a goldfinch.
It’s warm out here, we promised.
You rub your belly, coaxing her gently, come on.

We look out the window together, sirens raining,
wondering with the sky
watching the clouds pirouette.

Zachary T. Kalinoski

Zachary T. Kalinoski is a writer from Columbus, Ohio. When not scratching lines on paper or pecking a keyboard, you can find him wrangling data for organizations, listening to poetry podcasts, and adoring time with his wife, daughter, and cavapoo. 

**

Cooling of Bodies 

What one suffers to understand,
it was apparent pleading wouldn’t help.
Necessarily, God, while visiting London,
had the occasion to meet up with–
The Devil.
He’d been imprisoned for some time now.
Some sort of “let the bodies cool down” matter.
A soul that remains indefeasibly free in its choices, always speaks from an interesting place.
“Still holding on to that ransom? “You know it’s hard to let things go.”
“They let a few of us out.
–some sort of pardon.
You wouldn’t have had anything to do with that, would you?”

“You know some matters are completely out of my hands.”
“You really—you’re kidding.”

“The Resurrection that prefigured the Saints…are you still working on that? –
You’re still working on that one little planet, in the middle of nowhere.”
“And where have you been?
“There was a lot of rehab-where you sent me…”
“Earth is not so bad.
Everywhere, things break.”
“I’ve gotten used to it.”
“Come on--
You know you couldn’t get away.
God knows you, and you know London.”
“They say–” “You are not a philosopher.”
“Really.”
“I almost missed the Perfection,
but then everywhere I looked— there you were.”
“I can be very stubborn.
It seems like an eternity… We should do this again.”
“Do be mindful to look twice –crossing the block.”

“You’ve never lost that sense of humour.”
–Good day, Sir,
–and as they parted, London exhaled—as if relieved that even now, the oldest argument was still being tended by the only two who could bear it. But as he walked away, each felt the familiar ache– that strange, impossible longing for the one opponent who understood him better than any friend ever could. And the city resumed its hum, unaware that the cooling of bodies is never about bodies—but about the heat that remains between those who cannot let each other go. 

MWPiercy

Michael W. Piercy : At the intersection of Art, Poetry and Contradiction, you will find my work, you will find me. Observing memories and the present moment , thinking with an eye that shadows the natural world. Philosophy, Theology, and Science are core of my writing - I have found that I am a synthesizer. Managing ideas which do not always cohere. A manipulator of ideas–

**

​Simple Truths

Spirals of time
lives lived, paths lost
The twists and turns
of the unexpected.

Greyscale blends together
overlapping, obscuring
Becoming a squirming mass
of ephemera

Black blots out
halfling variations
Bold, brash, purity
of voice and spirit

White above all
erasing those below
Unconcerned by anything
underfoot.

A metaphor of melanin.

Brydon Caldwell

Brydon is a long time teacher and emerging writer from the western edge of the Canadian Shield. This is his first submission to The Ekphrastic Review.

**

Theatre of Many Threads

As I view Schoenholtz
the opening appears at the top. 
The muddle in the middle gives way.
Release opens suddenly.
All lines stop.

In days before dying
Dan denied the monotones of his life.
Then in the daze of pre-death transformation
he saw his exit--
his own way out of time and space 
released from the Theater of Many Threads
and restored to the vibrational realm of the great I am.

Susan Kirsch

Susan Kirsch is a Marin County, CA poet, colorist, and artist. In March, she will launch a book series called Simply Go*d. The Vol. 1 subtitle is "Praise Poems Celebrating the Divine in Daily Life." Vol. 2, to be published mid-2026, carries the subtitle "Praise Poems & Colorings for Everyday Mindfulness." Susan's poetry and art are a playful mix of observation and insight, aiming to use an asterisk to connect God and Good.  

**

Serpentine 

Our tour bus traced the Serpentine up mountains in Montenegro, teetering at the edge of the fenceless road. We were on our way to a farming village called Njegusi, where we would have a lunch made up of ingredients that all came from the village: ham-and-cheese sandwiches (made from their pigs, their cows, on bread made by the villagers) and honey wine, the national drink, also made in the village. 

We were a busload of Americans, taking photos for back home. Everything was exotic to us. Even the word “village,” which sounded more from a fairy tale than real life. Even the names of places, which we were never quite sure how to pronounce. 

My then-boyfriend, Tim, and I felt like imposters. We weren’t really supposed to be there. The weeklong trip to Dubrovnik, Croatia, with tour-bus day trips into Montenegro and, on a different day, Bosnia and Herzegovina (one country, two names) wasn’t something we could afford. For the past ten years I’d been supporting both of us on my puny newspaper-reporter’s salary, while Tim’s manic depression kept him unable to work, or convinced he was unable to work. 

That is, until he started looking at travel magazines and decided he wanted to go to Croatia. While I was at work, he did the math and figured out that if he got a minimum-wage job and worked there for a few months, we could maybe afford to go. He got a job in the warehouse at the back of a hardware store. It shocked me how easily he did this. He’d seen me struggle to support us for nearly a decade, writing checks for groceries on Thursday night when the money to cover it wouldn’t hit my bank account until payday on Friday. At the apartment complex where we lived, cockroaches streamed from cracks in the sidewalk.

Yet here we were. After this quaint mountain lunch we’d return to our apartment-for-the-week that overlooked the Adriatic Sea, an unearthly-to-us turquoise against the creamy old limestone town and terra-cotta roofs. We took a ferry to a haunted island where Napoleon had once set foot, where now there was only an abandoned monastery, olive groves, and peacocks wandering around like it was their job. We ate gelato and watched the limestone glow in the cobalt evening. . 

And now: We rode a tour bus up the death-defying, hairpin turns of a road that slithered around and around on its way up the mountains and had only one narrow lane, so you felt like you really might die every time the tour bus met another tour bus coming in the opposite direction. The tight curves of this road were famous: 16 back-to-back swerves in which the tour bus had to jackknife itself around to stay on the road; we made our way up 3,000 feet of this, looking down on the aqua-jewel Bay of Kotor. 

There’s a picture Tim took of me with that bay in the background, far below: my thin shoulders slumped like a beast of burden, my tight fake smile, hiding behind sunglasses and a canvas hat. 

Looking back now, I can see that decade with Tim in layers of colour, even if at first it seems colorless, a drained contrast to our vacation in Croatia, a flash of respite in turquoise, terra cotta, limestone, cobalt. 

The surface of our back-home life, on top of everything, was white: the color of paper on which you write to-do lists, grocery lists, reminder notes. (“Remember to wake up early enough to drop me off at work so you can use the car to go apply for jobs.”) The color of calendar pages, a blank background for rote tasks. 

Just get through the day, I’d think. Just keep him alive. Just make sure he survives another day. There were other colors besides white, such as the pink scars on his arms, and the baby blue of his eyes, but I mostly saw white. I made myself see white. 

But beneath everything, at all times, was the blackness. His depression, his threats to take his life. Sometimes, dark voices only he could hear. For ten years there was not a single day that the black wasn’t showing through. 

Only later could I see the gray. It took a while for me to stop seeing in binaries, to hold two truths up at the same time: I can love him, but not want him. I can care about him, but not want to be with him. I can leave him, and still be a good person. The gray was harder to see but it was always there, at the base of everything that snaked across it. Several kinds of gray, in fact. The colour of rubbed-out graphite when a mistake has been erased but its shadow remains. The colour of sun-bleached asphalt on a death-trap road, or a straight one, a highway in the desert you drive on to start a new life. The colour of ghosts: now you see them, now you don’t. 

I can see that sometimes the only path to a place is one that zigs and zags in double the miles a straight one would take, but you have to take it if you want to make it to the honey wine. 

Christie Chapman

Christie Chapman is a writer and mom in Springfield, Virginia. Her work has been published by The Lascaux Review, Ghost Parachute, ARTWIFE, and others, and was selected for the Best Microfiction anthology. Her daughter is Deaf, and her family uses American Sign Language (ASL) at home when her daughter is taking a break from her cochlear implants.  

**

The Potter 
​
When I arrived in the town of money-grubbing souls, everyone ignored me–until my offer caught their attention.

“You see before you a potter,” I said. “Allow me to show you, free of charge, how to make an item that you will all undoubtedly need.”

I taught the townsfolk to roll clay into five strips, which they joined, twisted, turned and moulded in such a way that they each created an urn. I then fired the urns in my furnace.

“Now you have receptacles for your ashes,” I said and pitched the townsfolk, one at a time, into the furnace.

K. J. Watson

K. J. Watson’s stories and poems have appeared on the radio; in magazines, comics and anthologies; and online.

**

An Ekphrastic Pantoum

​thick brush strokes, whites and greys
perfect curves overlap, gather like thought
wound and rising, a hush among the frenzy, hurry to finish
Soft swing of tide and wind, spilling from cupped hands

perfect curves overlap, gather like thought
desire held at the lip
Soft swing of tide and wind, spilling from cupped hands
the long road coils before me, tires losing traction

desire held at the lip
a monition: keep moving
the long road coils before me, tires losing traction
Your presence wants

a monition: keep moving
to tell me about God
Your presence wants
in one long sentence.

to tell me about God
wound and rising, a hush among the frenzy, hurry to finish
in one long sentence.
thick brush strokes, whites and greys

Rachael Taylor

**

Life or Something Like It
 
This is what they didn’t tell you
How graceful this falling
(Though falling nonetheless
For all the grace of it)
 
This is what they didn’t tell you
These shadows following
Those racing ahead These 
twists Those turns
 
This they might have mentioned
Everything comes from the womb
Becomes the womb feels like
a wound
 
This is what they didn’t tell you
The disappearances The left
behinds The sweet comings
The I’m out of here goings
 
This is what they didn’t tell you
The accidental connections
The rhythms The chaos
The abrupt (you are never ready for it)
ends

Karen Gettert Shoemaker

Karen Gettert Shoemaker is a fiction writer, poet, teacher, mother, wisher and worker for peace in our time. 

​**

​Dark Queen

The May Queen comes dressed in black,
stabbing at the air, with twisted ribbons,
calling on ravens to take charge of the fields.

An artist sits, painting the slingshots,
erasing the dead as they fall,
ink-blotting their eyes from seeing the truth.

There is no end to the violent streams,
we try to close the book, and another begins,
pretending to be the answer, the new queen

splurting rhetoric to please the masses,
appease the riches; a conjurer's trick
of ribbons to hide their real motives.

Zachary Thraves

Zachary Thraves is a writer and performer from the UK. His poems have been published by Broken Sleep Books, Juste Millieu and others, and his plays performed internationally. In 2023 he performed a one-man fringe show exploring his experience being diagnosed with bi-polar, and in the same year won best actor for portraying Charles Dickens. He lives with his partner in East Sussex. Find him on Bluesky @28hary.

**

On the 14th of February
 
Slinging our joyous memories 
as if in a blender,
becoming rough, 
hard to swallow.
 
Unentwining
the knots of our love,
loose ends spinning,
only a shadow remaining.

Donna Reiss

Writer, editor, teacher, bookmaker, and mixed media/paper artist, Donna lives in Greenville, South Carolina, where she is a member of the Greenville Center for Creative Arts, the Guild of American Papercutters, and the Poetry Society of South Carolina. Follow her on Instagram @dreissart

**


Threads of Fate

I live three intertwined lives.

One follows the white 
magic path spiral 
upwards and downwards.

The dark ribbon is the deep self;
actions and consequences
spoken, taken, and imagined.

In between white tendril
and black tendril lives
the gray that straddles

the conscious, waking self
of sweet smiles and  tight corners
curled up revealing nothing.

Then there’s the underside
where honey from lips slips 
out with bee barbs still attached.

Fingers furled close to palms;
voice, tone, inflections highly 
trained to be calm as a glassy sea.

I live three intertwined lives.

They mesh and clash,
meld and weld,
becoming one.

Laura Peña

Laura Peña is an award-winning poet born and raised in Houston, Tx. She holds a BA in English Literature and an MA in Education. She is a primary bilingual teacher as well as a translator of poetry into Spanish. Laura has been a featured poet at Valley International Poetry Festival, Inprint First Fridays, and Public Poetry. She has been published both in print and on-line journals. She has been a workshop presenter at VIPF in the Rio Grande Valley, Tx. and People's Literary Festival in Corpus Christi, Tx.. One of Laura's annual traditions is to write a poem a day for August Postcard Poetry Festival and has participated in the fest for the last 13 years. Laura has performed poetry for Invisible Lines at such venues as Notsuoh, Interchange, Avante Garden, and The Match. 

**

Life is But a Fleeting Fling

Now that I am old 
    and dithery
decades past my best 
    before date
but not yet dead

I want to find the time to
    sail away to Mexico
    toss paint against the barricades
    light the bonfire 
          of my vanities

I want to find the time to
    breathe in the stillness and the silences
    share a mantra or two with the universe
    greet the reaper
           like a jealous lover 

Donna-Lee Smith

DLS resides in Montreal where she is serenely slouching into her dotage!​
​

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The prompt this time is Sonnet, by Stephanie Grainger. Deadline is February 27, 2026. 

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

The Rules

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​

 
Season-Tilt: With Spring-Flow and Dark-Spill
 
Lift and curl the arm that guides the blade,
Though shoulder sinews ache their length from frost.                            
Prune the tree for fruit, the ground for bread,
Reweave the roof against the Lenten blast. 
 
The leaden ice beneath the ice will crack,
Drown merchant ship, down herring buss and barque.  
When molten snows roar down the castle crag:
Hoard wood to gild, and salt to salve, the hearth
 
Against the lumbering grays that prowl the town.
Earth shakes its fevers loose with axle-turn.
With every hare-coat warmed from white to brown,
The thawing chills the wandering mind that burns.
 
The cure for wintered thoughts is honeyed work:
Hived light, the secret dance that breaks the dark.
 
Lyn Davidson
 
Lyn Davidson is a multilingual journalist, poet, and tour guide based in San Francisco. She can also often be found in Mexico and the Czech Republic. In November 2025, she created and led a historical walking tour called Prague Through the Eyes of Its Poets, in celebration of the city’s annual Den Poezie event honoring Czech national poet Karel Hynek Mácha. 
 
*
 
The Letter 

“Read it, Wouter, read it aloud!” Claes shouts.

It’s not my letter to read, it’s Willem’s, but Willem won’t read it aloud, because Willem can’t read, much to his shame and my great enjoyment. So I shove Willem out of the way, holding the letter he brought foolishly to work today, just out of his grasp, and Claes leans in close, salivating at the very promise of a secret. If Willem didn’t want it known, he shouldn’t have brought the letter to work. More fool him. 

The wind threatens to pull the pages of the letter from my hand and carry them to the sea before I read it. The Voorman will surely throttle us soon if we don’t get back to it. Trees need pruning. Wood needs cutting. But then there is this mysterious letter which needs reading.

“Oh my dear Willem,” I begin, with my voice pitched high and my chest thrust forward lustily.
Claes is already laughing. A love letter. Delicious. Willem’s face twists in shame. I continue.

“By the time you read this, it will already be done. I am sorry I couldn’t find a way to get this news to you sooner.” Now that’s a turn. Perhaps not a love letter. I glance at Willem, and his eyes are wide.

“Go on, go on,” Claes demands.

I look to Willem. I look to Claes. These two paths of my nature are splitting before me. I should return the letter. I should get back to work. It’s not my news to know.

My mother’s hand against my cheek. Her eyes saying all the things a mother’s eyes can say. “Wouter, we aren’t just the sum of our good, we’re also the remainder of our worst.” She said things like that. She said them while emptying slop into a trough for the pigs.

“Should I be continuing, then, Willem?” I ask him, because I am, after all, trying to meet my mother in heaven one day, I remember.

Wilem looks to the Voorman, who has not yet noticed our slacking. He looks to Claes, who has nothing of interest going on in his own life and who’s clearly hungry for gossip he can trade with the barmaid in the Kroeg tonight, where he’ll peer down her gaping blouse as she leans over the bar saying, “Oh, go on then Claes, tell us more.” And then Willem turns to me.

“Read it for me, but quiet,” Willem says.

So we huddle together from the cutting wind that is tearing the waves up and spinning the ships in the harbour. And I read it to him, with our faces turned together and the coming storm swirling at our backs. I tell Willem that his little sister is gone. I tell him that though they wished for him to be there, so he might bury her with a flower and a kiss, she couldn’t be buried. And we know why, Willem, Claes, and I. Because the death that carried her off was the spreading kind. 

“I’m sorry we took your letter, Willem,” Claes says.

“You couldn’t know what it said,” Willem replies, turning his face into the biting wind that blows so hard his tears run parallel to his cheek. I fold the two pages together and pass them back to him.

But we could have known, or at least we could have guessed, because isn’t that the news right now? Plague and persecution. Isn’t now the worst it’s ever been, and the worst it ever will be? Is it too much to want the missives of a lover to dispel, if only for a moment, this darkness?
 
Jen Eve Thorn
 
Jen Eve Thorn is a writer, director, and public speaker. Her debut novel, Bitch Coyote is a finalist for the 2026 San Francisco Writers Conference Contest and she’s a nominee for Best Microfiction of the Year 2025. Thorn’s work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, and Raw Lit Magazine. She’s one of the founders of MOXIE Theatre and lives in San Diego with her husband and teenagers. www.jenevethorn.com
 
*
 
And the Woods Were No More

In sombre bleakness labourers persist,
clinging to leafless willows they cut
while hauling wood to patch open roofs,
as a paper-crowned boy asks for waffles.

Castled mountains in the misty distance
predict encroaching onslaughts of snow,
as stormy waters nearby sink fragile ships
and no one survives in that brownish flood.

That morning the clouds kept layering. By noon
their low-slung floor stretched in all directions
along the river edge's to a few remaining trees,
raising bony pillars in the crowded emptiness.

The daily deluge of the unstopping rain
that should have warned and urged them
to find handy carpenters to build an ark
loosened the soil, so trees gave way.

One after another, the stands of old oaks,
whose interior rings bore the evidence
they had guarded and shaded the living
here for hundreds of years, just toppled.

No blasts of a mighty wind pushed them,
just the toll of their greatly relaxed hold
on the underlying wet earth  --  and tumbling,
roots and all, were tokens of fallen kingdoms.
 
Royal Rhodes
 
Royal Rhodes is a retired educator who taught the topic of Death & Dying for almost forty years. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals. He lives in a rural village, near a nature conservancy and Amish farms.
 
*
 
Calendar

Low postage for late Christmas gift,
along with socks and woolly hat;
is this a page from calendar,
remaindered in post season sales?
Mere half the year depicted here --
six Bruegels (for the one is lost),
so interspersed with other art,
a masterpiece but poorly print?

There’s too much for that hung on wall,
those details of an early March.
Just glance above the circled date,
but crown and waffles, heady mix
of pre-lent carnival, and ships.
To canvas for such vibrant life
on A4 sheet in A5 size --
small token figured on a page.

Combining climate’s coming harsh
with festive ’fore approaching Lent,
in range of yellows, tans and browns
with known gradations ’twixt the planes -
does melancholy hold the day
despite the bay of crashing waves?
Entitled gloom, for empathy,
but surely dun as turn the page.
 
Stephen Kingsnorth
 
Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review. He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.  His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com
 
*
 
The Tempest
 
Pieter Bruegel was a painter of the flat Dutch landscape. But no artist stands still. After so much horizon he surely found The Dutch Hills (Heuvelland) with its mounds, valleys, streams. And then he just might even have been enchanted by the Ardennes, a harsher mountainous landscape in what is now Belgium.
 
How can a painter resist the Dutch sky, permanently dramatic, even on most of its summer days. And often the storms roll in from the unforgiving North Sea, the flatlands allowing it free reign, come in they say, we won’t oppose you, and the dark clouds descend, the last leaves are taken in the late-autumn dance, the trees skeletal, ready for pruning. And the people are prepared. They are one with whatever the seasons are bringing, know that Calvin’s God will have His angry way. This is the time to prepare for spring. The small houses crouch down a little lower, the roofs are trying to pull in their edges, a tree or two gives in to the first onslaught, but the men are out there, hammering in those last nails, fixing Widow Hendriks’ window frame, cutting the dry branch that had been threatening to fall on the van Dyke house. They have thirty minutes before the full fury of the storm will drive them inside to wait for a meek sun which they know will come again once the clouds have unloaded, the wind has blown itself out, calm has returned. They will be inside their homes, their clogs in the mudroom, the fires lit, and on the table a stamppot with smoked sausage and gravy, their voices low, their hands not used to idleness.
 
May our storm
blow itself out --
let calm return
 
Rose Mary Boehm
 
Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels, short stories, eight poetry collections and one chapbook, her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She is a several times Pushcart and a Best of Net nominee. All her recent books are available on Amazon. The new chapbook, The Matter of Words, was published in June 2025, and a new full-length collection has been slated for publishing in 2027. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/
 
*
 
Dystopia
 
Elected Incompetence
scorched the horizon
burned old friends
snuffed out reason
suffocated cities
 
Enterprising Peasants
collected scraps
connected the lost
constructed shelter
 
Governing Bodies
slept
 
Cathy Hollister
 
Cathy Hollister is the author of Seasoned Women, A Collection of Poems published by Poet’s Choice.  When not writing you might find her on the dance floor enjoying the company of friends or deep in the woods basking in the peace of solitude. A 2024 Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has been in Eclectica Magazine, Canyon Voices, Burningword Literary Journal, Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, and others. She lives in middle Tennessee; find her online at www.cathyhollister.com.
 
*
 
Wafelijser 
 
You lean close to the iron.
Wind needles through the seam in the trees --
fingers again, old and mean,
prying where heat collects. 
 
It slaps the trees
until they forget how to hold still.
Something clacks inside --
the kind of sound that sends you looking. 
 
Your sleeves ride up again.
Cloth always quits early.
Cold pinches the soft skin --
the same patch it blisters
each year. 
 
The batter drags,
thick as doubt,
slumps in the bowl’s curve.
You leave it to sulk.

Sap does the same --
grudging, heavy,
no mind to be made. 
 
You know what it wants --
the batter, the burn.
Pulled from its place on the hearth shelf --
our own, old thing,
seasoned to bite.

Waffles for Carnival,
sweet and gone
before the smoke clears. 
They eat.
You count your blisters.
No one asks the name of the girl who cooked. 
 
The handle slews --
slips just enough to warn you.
You set the iron down,
stare at the skin:
old shine of scars,
new bloom of blisters
rising into themselves. 
A boy walks by --
paper crown slipping down one side.
His arms swing wide,
fat with the feast I’ve made
since they stopped calling me child.
 
For a few steps,
the road performs the old script --
lets him play king.
The crown folds.
No one breaks the spell. 
 
Beyond the slope,
the sea shoulders itself forward,
blunt with old purpose.
Boats lean, lean again --
rehearsing the fall
they were born for. 
 
You don’t look long.
The sea never answers for itself. 
 
Someone hacks at wood.
Someone hauls the cold water.
Flame coaxes from damp.
The dark flinches --
doesn’t go. 
 
The light holds for now.
The year shows its teeth. 
 
You reach for the hinge --
hands sure from years of this.
Close the iron.
Miss the slot.
Try again. 
 
Fingers jolt --
nerve-fire, then nothing.
You stand there.
Wait for your body
to remember what it’s for. 
 
When it does,
the iron gapes open.
The batter waits.
The work
outlasts the fire. 
 
Awen Fenwick
 
Awen Fenwick is a poet based in Ohio. She writes about ritual, memory, and the body’s quiet forms of survival. New to the poetry community, she’s currently working on two full-length manuscripts and exploring how poems hold what doesn’t fit into story.
 
*
 
Dancing Already

Although the chilly air beckons me to stay under covers, I wrap myself in my warmest clothing and venture out into the late January morning.

Snow in the mountains looms far from our village. Wind-whipped water blows the boats in the lake. But I gather warmth from the grownups already welcoming this new year and the coming of spring, though still months away by the calendar.

Fires brighten the dark as the men gather sticks and the women make waffles.

Oh, you may call this a gloomy day, but for me and my brothers the day is glorious, the promise of dancing in sunlight its own kind of warmth. I won’t wait to make my paper crown for Carnival. We are dancing already, our steps making music, our hopefulness challenging the dark.
 
Donna Reiss
 
Donna Reiss is a writer, editor, teacher, bookmaker, and mixed media/paper artist. She lives in Greenville, South Carolina, where she is a member of the Greenville Center for Creative Arts, the Guild of American Papercutters, and the Poetry Society of South Carolina. Follow her on Instagram @dreissart.
 
*
 
To Pieter Bruegel the Elder Regarding Gloomy Day
 
Eerie is your winter dimming,
holding in its darkness brimming,
haunting rage of melt descended
leaving ill-prepared upended
 
while, above their river, neighbours --
bent to wisdom's daunting labours --
pollard trunks of trees forbearing
plumage spring will yield from paring
 
as the children, smiles prevailing,
feast upon their treats regaling
eve before religious season
resurrecting love from treason,
 
teaching tale of hill and river --
foresight's faith is gift to giver.
 
Portly Bard
 
Portly Bard: Prefers to craft with sole intent...
of verse becoming complement...
...and by such homage being lent...
ideally also compliment.
 
Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise
for words but from returning gaze
far more aware of fortune art
becomes to eyes that fathom heart.
 
*
 
The Shipwreck

in the early morning
the quiet village
still sleeps
 
in an hour the women 
will wake, don their aprons
and open their larders

set out the meat, cheeses,
and bread for for day’s meals
send the boys to chop firewood

send the girls for fresh milk
eggs, fruits, and honey
for breakfast

in the early morning
the quiet village
is unaware

that one of their ships
so close to home
has broken apart
 
twenty men won’t
be at the breakfast,
lunch, or dinner tables

the much needed provisions
scattered, fodder for the sea
creatures, the much desired

bolts of cloth for new clothes,
bedding, and curtains shredded
upon the rocks and in the distance

the wealthy nobleman sits
in his castle overlooking
the village, continues

drinking his wine and shrugs 
off the loss too far away to hear
the village waking

to tragedy; the women 
wailing for their husbands
the children crying for their fathers

Laura Peña
 
Laura Peña is an award-winning poet born and raised in Houston, Tx. She holds a BA in English Literature and an MA in Education. She is a primary bilingual teacher as well as a translator of poetry into Spanish. Laura has been a featured poet at Valley International Poetry Festival, Inprint First Fridays, and Public Poetry. She has been published both in print and on-line journals. She has been a workshop presenter at VIPF in the Rio Grande Valley, TX. and People's Literary Festival in Corpus Christi, TX. One of Laura's annual traditions is to write a poem a day for August Postcard Poetry Festival and has participated in the fest for the last thirteen years. Laura has performed poetry for Invisible Lines at such venues as Notsuoh, Interchange, Avante Garden, and The Match. Laura translated Margo Stutt Toombs’ poem “How to Tend a Wall” into Spanish and the accompanying short film premiered at Fotogenia Festival 2025 in Mexico City.   
 
*
 
Before the Thaw: Sonnet after Bruegel's Gloomy Day 
 
Jagged heights hold back a roiling sky, 
The salt-spray stings, and bitter wind pursues 
The tattered clouds that low and heavy lie, 
Drenched in the leaden gloom of winter's hues. 
 
With gnarled hands, they bind the brittle brush, 
While children huddle, gnawing at their bread; 
Against the wind, the leaning gables thrust,
As overhead, the scent of storm is spread. 
 
The woodmen bend against the mountain's breath, 
Their shadows lost in mud and tangled briar. 
They pollard trees against a seasonal death, 
While children dream of honey cakes and fire. 
 
Though iron clouds may shroud the sun from sight, 
The stubborn heart prepares for the coming light. 
 
Elanur Eroglu Williams
 
Elanur Eroglu Williams writes from New York City, where she lives with her husband and daughter.  Her favorite Shakespearean sonnet is Sonnet 29. 
 
*
 
Winter: A Warning
 
Stand in the right spot, and you will see
black winter eat its way across the land,
sinking sharp teeth deep in the soil,
swallowing the heartening colours of fall.
 
Stack your firewood, countryfolk,
store hay for livestock,
secure your shutters and doors.
Beware, those who suffer from sadness on dark days --
winter in this place will sup on your soul.
 
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.
 
*
 
Anticipation Interrupted
 
Looking back, we should have
had the foresight to undertake
this fence repair earlier in the day,
before turbulent seas and darkened
skies trumpeted their announcement
of a squall brewing; but this morning’s
clear sky, its searing sun centerpiece
indicated a day of frolic and levity
which led us to dream of sprouting buds
on leafless trees and crooked branches.
Surely, spring is just around the corner,
but first, Mother Nature demonstrates
her ability to dramatically shift between
freezing and warm weather conditions.
Quick, before it’s too late, please pass
my wattle, drawknife, and mallet.
 
Elaine Sorrentino
 
Elaine Sorrentino, author of Belly Dancing in a Brown Sweatsuit (Kelsay Books, 2025) has been published in journals such as Quartet Journal, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Gyroscope Review, Ekphrastic Review, and Haikuniverse. A fan of ekphrastic poetry, she is facilitator of the Duxbury Poetry Circle.
 
*
 
Ancestral Homeland
 
For a moment, I thought that I was looking at a picture of the Hudson River, an Asher Durand or Thomas Cole. On a closer, look I realized this painting was made almost half a century before the Dutch would ever lay claim to the Hudson River Valley. 
 
Henry Hudson sailed up the river in 1609, claiming the area for the Dutch. Later, it would be taken over by the English, but the Dutch influence still remained. 
 
A smattering of Dutch place names. From Manhattan, the Bronx, and Spuyten Duyvil, all the way up to Kinderhook and Voorheesville. 
 
Folktales like Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle.
 
Dutch Reformed churches that dot the landscape, surrounded by the graves of original settlers with names like Van Wyck, Van Voorhis, Rombout and Brett. 
 
The Hudson River was carved out by a glacier thousands of years ago, a great scraping of ice and rock across our state. It carved out a glacial gorge that extends from the Adirondacks to Manhattan and Long Island. 
 
It is believed that people tend to settle the places that remind them of their ancestral homelands.  The Scots Irish in Appalachia; the Germans in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania and Ohio.
 
While there are some differences, perhaps the Hudson River with its craggy rocks, or the low-lying coastal areas of New York City, New Jersey and Maryland, reminded the Dutch of their ancestral homeland. 
 
Lila Feldman
 
Lila Feldman lives in Upstate New York and works in healthcare. She enjoys creative writing in her spare time, mostly prose and memoir. This is her third time submitting to The Ekphrastic Review. 
 
*
 
There Goes the Sun
 
The skies are burnt, charcoal clouds stand to attention
ready to pounce at any moment; the air sticks
as if posing a question, and little men scurry
wondering where the end of the world sits.
 
Does it fall off an edge? Where does the sea drain?
Why do the trees remind me of Roman statues?
They ask, while eating a lunch of wheat and week-old meat.
They sit in circles, chanting, trying to remember their homes.
They chatter and make sure each word follows the last, without success.
 
This is the industry; lift your neck above the curtain
of mustard smog, of prying eyes waiting for you to drop.
Brew the tea to oblivion, follow the recipe and the orders.
Bleach your mind so that you don’t notice it was you
who turned the once white clouds black. 
 
Zachary Thraves 
 
Zachary Thraves is a writer and performer from the UK, based in East Sussex. His poems have been accepted by Broken Sleep Books and Juste Millieu to name but two, and his plays have been performed locally and at international competitions. He performed a one-man fringe show in 2023 exploring his bi-polar and the mental health industry, and in the same year won best actor for portraying Charles Dickens. He lives with his partner and has two children.
 
*
 
Chiaroscuro
 
No one hears her cry,
her urgent whispers.
We’re too busy
fighting a brisk breeze
beneath portentous skies.
 
Later, longing for bread and wine,
we discover her blank eyes,
the upturned bowl,
flour dusting the floor,
her checkered apron.
 
Now we grieve
nature’s calling,
always shifting --
dark to light,
light to dark.
 
Barbara Edler
 
Barbara Edler is a semi-retired teacher. She lives in southeast Iowa along the Mississippi River. Writing poetry is her lifeline. Her work has been published in a variety of journals and books including Lyrical Iowa, Grant Wood Country Chronicles, Encore Prize Poetry 2025, Ethical ELA publications, and The Cities of the Plains: An Anthology of Iowa Artists and Poets.
 
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It’s Our Own Damn Fault

We bring dark storm clouds
Ravaging Earth to anger
Her thunder ignored
Each tree we fell is reason
For lightning to strike us next
 
Rose Menyon Heflin
 
Originally from rural, southern Kentucky, Rose Menyon Heflin is a poet, writer, and visual artist living in Wisconsin. Her award-winning poetry has been published over 250 times in outlets spanning five continents, and she has published memoir and flash fiction pieces. She has had a free verse poem choreographed and danced, an ekphrastic memoir piece featured in a museum art exhibit, and two haiku published in a gumball machine. Among other venues, her poetry has appeared in Deep South Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, and San Antonio Review. An OCD sufferer since childhood, she strongly prefers hugging trees instead of people. 
 
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 A Home for All Seasons 
 
The ominous sky loomed dark and dreary. Settlers toiled in the icy countryside chopping wood, carving tools and clearing the land. Housing was needed for families who lost their minimal possessions in a raging fire that left burnt-out shells once inhabited by townsfolk who called this countryside home.
 
In the valley below, houses covered with thatched roofs stood erect, a testament to the strength of the residents.
 
Willow trees flanked the slopes of the hills and were prized by the residents for their flexibility and resilience. Crackling sounds from blades of axes pierced the air as logs split from the trees and fell to the ground. Towering willows secured themselves to the restless landscape during the snow and ice of winter months and sheltered everyone from the harsh elements.  
 
Oldtimers shared stories of trees swaying in the blustery winter breezes. Howling gusts reminiscent of wolves in the forests, filtered through the leaves as branches bent but never broke. The strength of the trees mirrored the resilience and adaptability of the people. Willows, perfect for the terrain, prevented soil erosion and flourished on the rocky hillside. Children scampered beneath them in summer, shielded from the hot sun as they played rousing games of hide and seek. Ropes strung from branches with attached wood seats that were carved from limbs and made into swings, provided hours of merriment for youngsters. Moms with babies in tow supervised play activities as they sewed scraps of fabric from worn-out shirts and dresses into patchwork quilts.
 
These countryfolk were devoted to their willow trees for the medicinal properties provided. Bark, stripped from the trees in the spring and chopped into small squares were chewed to a pulpy consistency and served as a natural pain reliever for achy shoulders and backs. A welcome respite after a long day of toiling in the hills.
 
Grandparents, wise from their years, used the example of the willow tree to tell their grandchildren stories of survival during harsh winters, hot dry summers and springtime when rains were absent. Rain needed to moisten the manure-covered soil to guarantee an abundance of fruit and vegetables, especially corn. Crisp on the cob, ground into meal, stirred in soups and dried for popping on hearth fires highlighted the many uses for this delicious vegetable. Grandchildren learned about survival and adapting to daily challenges when everything appeared bleak.
 
Snow-capped mountains stood tall in the distance as ships in the waterway below tossed about in stomach wrenching waves as they inched their way to the shoreline. Loaded with textiles, spices, tobacco and sacks of sugar, the ship’s stop was a welcome respite for the townspeople. Trading occurred and essentials were received until the next ship arrived in four to six months and the process repeated.
 
Through it all, the church in the valley, identified by its spire, remained a symbol of hope for the people. Traveling preachers periodically stopped and delivered encouraging Sunday sermons. A resident pastor and his family were due to arrive before the end of the year.
 
Afterwards, families gathered for the noon-day meal of hearty soup and fresh baked bread followed by bowls of preserved fruit. During warm months, the men of the community gathered on front porches and smoked pipes filled with aromatic tobacco while children frolicked among the trees. After the dishes were washed, dried and stored in cupboards, women gathered to piece together the squares of their patchwork quilts in preparation for the cold months ahead.
 
Neighbours helped neighbours. Men laboured side-by-side to repair and build houses that provided shelter for families and pitched in during planting season. Adolescent boys picked wood remnants and chips to fill timber boxes that guaranteed crackling fires that kept homes warm throughout the icy winters. Women worked together to harvest corn as children picked up loose kernels from the soil to save for popping or to feed pet chickens.
 
The little valley and the sloping hills made a community for all the people. It was home to many generations and would continue to be for years to come.
 
Beverly Sce
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Beverly Sce is a published author, writer and inspirational speaker at woman's retreats. She had an extensive career in public health at the local, state and national level and served in the U.S. military.  She has been published in numerous journals and book anthologies and most recently had a piece titled, "Christmas Eve Traditions" accepted for publication by Grace Publishing in December 2026. Beverly facilitates a variety of in-person and virtual workshops including, "Life Writing, Divorce Recovery” and “Writing the Journey Through Cancer.” In addition, she facilitates a Creative Writing Circle for Women. Beverly lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and their five-year-old German Shepard, professor emeritus at Barque University.