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Ekphrastic Writing Challenge: Nita Jawary

4/29/2022

1 Comment

 
Picture
Song of Love, by Nita Jawary (Australia) contemporary
Our challenge prompt this week is by Nita Jawary of Australia. She is one of our readers and writers, as well as a visual artist.

We are very excited that Anita is also our guest judge this time!

Anita Jawary (Nita Jawary) is a Melbourne writer, artist, poet and a fan of Charles Dickens. She has published in several journals including Be Guided by Art, The Ekphrastic Review, Mockingheart Review, Poetica Review, Jewish Women of Words, Songs of Eretz and has received a commendation certificate from the Society of Women Writers of Tasmania. She has also broadcast her work on Pier-Glass Panel March 2022 and Daily Daven. As an artist Anita has held thirteen solo exhibitions and participated in several group shows. She also works as a docent at the National Gallery of Victoria. Find out more about Anita at 
www.thedickensianchallenge.com

**

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


The prompt this time is Song of Love, by Nita Jawary. Deadline is May 13, 2022 .

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


**
​
The Rules

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

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

3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Helping the editor share the time and expenses involved is very much appreciated. There is an easy button to click below to share a five spot through PayPal or credit card. Thank you.
​

Voluntary gift of $5 CAD with submission.

GIVE

4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.

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

5.Include JAWARY CHALLENGE in the subject line.

6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. Do not send it after acceptance or later; it will not be added to your piece. Guest editors may not be familiar with your bio or have access to archives. We are sorry about these technicalities, but have found that following up, requesting, adding, and changing later takes too much time and is very confusing. 

7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 

8. Deadline is midnight EST, May 13, 2022.

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

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

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

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

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

14. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send Spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! We send a newsletter zero to two times a month, with hopes of more consistency in the future. It updates you on challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, the podcast, and more. You can cancel at any time, of course, but may find yourself back on the list after another submission. We hope you don't cancel because we like to stay in touch occasionally!

​15. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges!
​
16. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages!

17. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.
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Ekphrastic Writing Responses: John Paul Caponigro

4/22/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
Antarctica Waking (unaltered photography), by John Paul Caponigro (USA) contemporary
Picture
Antarctica Dreaming (digitally altered version), by John Paul Caponigro (USA) contemporary

I Dream of Contrast

Sometimes I pretend the churning night sky is smog collecting over a furnace,
A swelling bruise on the air’s skin--
Destroying something so blue nothing blasphemous,
Though dispersing shamefully in ashy shafts of wind.

The world could use less blue, though I am blue,
Though I resent that gray is the shade to coat it
In gargoyle-ish, ugly hazes—converting beauty to mildew,
Reducing my ridges of icy scaffolding to a misfit

The tingle of numbness beneath my toes rivals that warm swirl above me
Cold opposed to hot, water to blood, mist to a broiled air’s breath
And while the clotty dark spots replace the stars momentarily,
I wonder if—against all odds—being bleached by darkness means a star’s death  

Some beauties are beautiful on their own,
While my beauty, without contrast, is unconcerning
But my dreams of sweltering, smeared skies sets a deadly tone
For if I dream of fire will I wake up burning?
I cannot tell if I’m lighter in darkness than I am before a white backdrop,
that if the sky is white then so am I
or if the sky is black then I am not.
The haze of my dream swirls above me
imitating those chakly hues of ebony, though ghostly--
Featherlight, available only to me, borderless and overwhelming as the air in my lungs.
Unfortunately, my lungs are brick--
Brick like cubes in the summer that melt in glasses.
Brick like polar bear beds that crackle and drift.
Brick like snow falling in painful pelts, dappling red irritations along the skin.
I am not human as I feel, 
but a floating mass of what people call 
Beauty
A chiseled ice brick that melts with the sky whether it's white or black.
But I want to be more than that.
I don’t want to 
Melt
like I do when the sky is light,
my ends interlaced with its beginnings as loveless lovers.
No, I want
Contrast
like the darkness brings, the exhilarating pop of smoky chrome 
against my outline.
So I dream of the heat to cause that mixing--
the storm necessary for my beauty,
the darkness and anger and ferocity of frowning clouds,
and I wake up burning.

Julia Kroin


Julia Kroin is a 9th grade student at Rye Country Day School. She enjoys writing in her free time and is currently working on a novel. She also writes for RCDS's school newspaper, as well as its literary magazine. In addition to her writing, Julia plays the bass guitar and will be joining her school’s jazz band next year. She loves taking her dog, D.J, to the beach whenever she can.

**
​
In Your Dreamwake, A Whale

Blue bleed through the glassy essence, wakelife into dreampivot: the glacier will examine you now. Follow the stream of pink quartz petrified in once molten granite. Faceted on the inside, the chamber holds you in a hum. What do you bring here? What will you take away, complicit in the melt? All your plastic convenience, the gravest.

The dolphins were afraid for us. We didn’t know to be afraid. From the far shore we launched our red and yellow kayaks into the sound. Black paddles, our waterfeet, sliced air, coaxed water, propelling us toward immensity. Dolphins crossed our path. Auspicious, we thought.

On a pebbled beach we stashed the red and yellow plastic vessels, tripped along the river through birch to a quartz pavement. We nearly turned back; it was further than we thought. The glacier receded as we advanced, didn’t want to be reached by us. Under the arch, a sapphire cave. Midsummer blue drips, crackle, a tunnel to the sky; a frequency that thrummed, reading our silent rhythms for their historical resonance.

Dreamthrum of the watertwin, the whale in your mirrorwake seeks passage to the heart. Melt, freeze, cryofracture; cycle of your spires. Split by water expansion, your expansion; hollow blue welcome ushering the polyphonic wingrush, of feathers whispering the down draft, the down. Dolphins ride you home.

Gayle Burgoyne

Gayle Burgoyne is writer, creative coach and reformed management consultant who lives in London, UK. She loves to explore the strangeness of human reality through art and mountain sports, and writes while watching the foxes who live under the shed.

**
​
My Affair Exposed

Blue ice, her eyes staring into mine
I try to look away but cannot—anger
deep within synapses, sometimes hidden.
but always dangerously there. I keep
my distance.

Jackie Langetieg

Jackie Langetieg has published poems in journals and anthologies and won awards, such as WWA’s Jade Ring contest, Bards Chair, and Wisconsin Academy Poem of the Year. She has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has written six books of poems, most recently,  Snowfall and a memoir, Filling the Cracks with Gold. www.jackiella.wordpress.com

**
​
Antarctica

Licking a snowcone
Fresh from the ground around me
A frosty summer. 

Vast blue icebergs glide
On the endless silent sea
Bearing away dreams. 

Blue ice, cold, silence
And glittering ice crystals
Maddening stillness.

Nivedita Karthik

Nivedita Karthik is a graduate in Immunology from the University of Oxford. She is an accomplished Bharatanatyam dancer and published poet. She also loves writing stories. Her poetry has appeared in Glomag, The Society of Classical Poets, The Epoch Times, The Poet (Christmas, Childhood, Faith, Friends & Friendship, and Adversity issues), The Ekphrastic Review, Visual Verse, The Bamboo Hut, Eskimopie, The Sequoyah Cherokee River Journal,  and Trouvaille Review. Her microfiction has been published by The Potato Soup Literary Journal. She also regularly contributes to the open mics organized by Rattle Poetry. She currently resides in Gurgaon, India, and works as a senior associate editor. Her first book of poetry, She: The reality of womanhood, was recently published by Notion Press (available on Amazon).

**

Ice Blind

The elements oppose us, my husband says, shivering harder than the wet dog scrabbling at his lap. Perched on the kitchen benches, our feet dangling in flood water, I brace the overhead cupboard doors against the onslaught of the disgruntled cat. Her travelling cage floated away in the night while we slept, lulled liquid by the silent river’s rise. 

Curling into the uneasy sling of the folding cot, I hunch a shoulder against the machinery grumble of the evacuation centre. My husband jostles his bed onto mine. His weight on the stacked sidebars tips me dizzy and I brace against the tumble. Forget land values, we’ll never own a patch of dirt. Frog-foot words, cool against my clammy ear. I fret about the cat, exiled to the ark made of a floating restaurant. I recall a parrot huddled in the hostess booth, the teenaged glower in her security camera eyes. 

With a thick hook, by lamplight, I crochet nets from videotape. My husband paces our assigned shipping container like a bunkered war criminal.  Condensation beads on the metal walls, trickling in runnels, soaking the bare-board floor. Everything except my mouth is damp. Unmoored, the dog searches our faces for landmarks. The cat, holding the cupboard doors against me in her turn, has joined the mutiny led by the African Grey. I wish them well.
 
We could inhabit an entire ice floe in the Antarctic, my husband says. There are jobs available, collecting scientific data. I crinkle loops of tape around my rust-stained fingers. Most of the cartridges lost their labels, soaked or faded into obscurity. Maybe the magnetic dots imperceptible to my finger tips are Bergman's gravestone face, turning from Bogart on the tarmac. Maybe a drowned neighbour’s sex tape. 

Morgana Macleod
​
Morgana Macleod lives and writes on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia. She has short stories published in several hard-copy anthologies you've never heard of, but you might have seen Thumbnail 5 and 6? Her work can also be found online at sites including New Flash Fiction Review, Medium and outofthegutteronline.com. Still buzzed by a recent Pushcart nomination, she's toying with writing a novel but concerned about the limits of her own attention span. Feel free to stalk her on Facebook (Morgana MacLeod) and Twitter @morganamacleod.

​**

​Swept Away
 
Swim I swim        in current swirls
each day       sunrise smiles upon
great glacier      ribbed vertebrae
to peaks – wind hewn          ice art
sculptured shapes    above water-
line     icy water   I turn and whirl
chunk breaks off      splash    I see
diminished shadows    against sky
white-blue ice           a new tunnel
They go         explore new passage
beneath beyond     ribbed wall I’ve
known              dare I venture forth
peer up     precarious peak     I fear
groaning cracking      swim  I swim
water warmer     sink to cold depths
will all glacier fall     to ruin   swept
to sea          where will I swim then?
 
Julie A. Dickson

Julie A. Dickson is a poet who finds peacefulness in water, sitting by a lake, stream or ocean. She writes of nature but also conflict and challenge, such as bullying and animal rights. Dickson holds a BPS in Behavioral Science: Gerontology from UNH and works in-home with elderly. Her work appears in New Verse News, Misfit and The Ekphrastic Review, among other journals and in full length on Amazon.

**

Why Be Blue? 
 
An ice giant lay down and deliquesced,
the only thing remaining now a spine
and iliac crest. Did he fight or did he acquiesce,
his discs like zipper teeth, like columns in a line?
 
He yielded to the warming earth and fell. Why fight
against reordering, one’s elements cupped and shaken 
like jacks before scattering? Why be blue in the light,
or why be blue at being blue? Taken
 
as a whole, any time at all is good,
any life, any being. So few are, you know.
Slimming, meagering even more into the flood,
he goes. Soon, he’ll disappear. Soon, I’ll follow.
 
Perhaps he’ll, we’ll, leave some echo,
a distant researcher will see it, and say, Oh!

Devon Balwit

Devon Balwit walks in all weather. Her most recent collections are Rubbing Shoulders with the Greats [Seven Kitchens Press 2020] and Dog-Walking in the Shadow of Pyongyang [Nixes Mate Books, 2021]. https://pelapdx.wixsite.com/devonbalwitpoet

**

The Wall

An icy mitre
Rough-hewed above the Bishop’s gate
A welcome breach
In a fortress colonnade 
 
The peaceful waters; reflecting, rippling
Foretell no storm nor ill
Yet sail with caution should you venture there
For, by the morning, it will be no more
 
Yet, the camera
Preserved its state for us to know
And ponder what might stand in stead
When next the morning comes
 
John Pettett

John Pettett has followed Caponigro's work for many years and is now interested in ekphrasis as well.

**

Antarctic Blues

glacial blue's the colour of deep penetrating cold, first
absorbed through your vision then that biting chill you
cannot forget – long before the snowflakes fall
the frigid air freezes any exposed patch of skin in
seconds.  It's the sound of ice candling that I love -
a crinkle-tinkle, bell-like music from shards with
pillared crystal structures and the specific blueness Antarctica
has a monopoly on.  As we sailed onward the ice colonnades and
archway appeared in front of our boat, like magic. And then
we began to wonder what might be through there - it
could be the entry to a yet undiscovered domain that breaks 
down the barriers of reality, because in this place your
head can never trust your eyes, and much less so your heart.

Emily Tee

Author's note: this is a Golden Shovel poem based on the quotation “first you fall in love with Antarctica, and then it breaks your heart” attributed to Kim Stanley.  In a Golden Shovel poem the last word of each line makes up the chosen phrase.

Emily Tee spent her working life wrangling numbers.  Now retired, she has recently started writing poetry.  She has had several pieces published in Ekphrastic Review challenges and will have some others in print later this year with other publications. She lives in England.

**

Orchestra at the End of the World 
 
Listen – the earth is gnawing 
her teeth. 
Don’t you hear? 
Splintering the ice. 
Can’t you hear her?  
Mellifluous mourning  
day and night. 
 
Listen – the earth is crying 
jagged tears. 
Don’t you hear? 
Symphony of blues. 
Can’t you hear her?  
Depths of melancholy 
to drown in. 
 
Listen – the earth is screaming, 
writhing in pain. 
Don’t you hear?  
Monstrous movement.  
Can’t you hear her?  
Darkness spilling 
from her jaws.  
 
Listen – the earth is asking,  
a question over and over. 
Don’t you hear?  
Pleading, pleading.  
Can’t you hear her?  
Waiting on an answer, 
fading, fading... ​

Siobhán Mc Laughlin

Siobhán is a poet and creative writing facilitator from Co. Donegal in Ireland. Her poems have appeared previously in The Ekphrastic Review and on the latest episode of the TERcets podcast. Her work has also appeared in The Honest Ulsterman, Drawn to the Light Press, The Poetry Village, The Trouvaille Review, The Waxed Lemon and more. She is currently working towards her first collection, distracted by cats and coffee. 

**

Berg Again

The blue/white sea dragon stills
on the inky surface of its habitat, 
but above and below are meaningless. Timeless. 
The picture it makes could be of anything, 
all things, as the creature that exists 
in this moment cedes itself, 
incrementally, to the heat of our glances, 
the heat thrown off by humanity wandering
ignorant of its very existence. Its exquisite form, 
monolithic as it is, is temporary, The neck arches 
over the water without a keystone, snout 
in the distance resting. The undulating scales
of its shadowy flank, age like Grecian columns. 
The bulk of it is hidden, like a sleeping volcano, 
feet perhaps seeking the very core of the planet. 
One day it will be something else, and 
further ahead, like all of us, it will become what it was, 
its constituent parts, molecules floating in the dark, 
waiting upon ripples of gravitational forces, 
preparing to become, once more. 
 
Rebecca Dempsey

Rebecca Dempsey’s recent work has featured in Shot Glass Journal, Ink Pantry and Elsewhere Journal. Rebecca lives in Melbourne, Australia, and can be found at WritingBec.com

**


Letter to the Heart of a Man who Still Mourns a Revoked Future

I can love you better than she can,
can chip and chisel the pockets of cornflower
into ice blue.

Something shipwrecked 
in this mirage of dark water—a queen
with her king, their castle not too far behind them?

And maybe it’s foot soldiers beside them?
“Or maybe they’re ghosts,” you seethe.

With all the fluting and fillets of your heart,
I still can
                           love you.

Better than she can, I can drown and never run
empty.

Storm your storm clouds
and I’ll fit you into every ripple of me.
Build a distant archway
and I’ll tongue what little salt there is into atrium.

Ahja Fox

Footnote: In architecture, an atrium is a large open-air or skylight-covered space surrounded by a building. Atria were a common feature in Ancient Roman dwellings, providing light and ventilation to the interior. Wikipedia 2. An atrium is a chamber of the heart that receives blood from the veins and forces it by muscular contraction into a ventricle.

Ahja Fox is a Colorado native who has editorial, hosting, and teaching experience through Art of Storytelling, Poetix University, Copper Nickel, and Homology Lit. She has been published in various online and print journals like Five:2:One, LEVELER, Driftwood Press, Okay Donkey, SWWIM and more (including various anthologies). Nominated by several journals for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize, Ahja has finally gotten up the nerve to draft two poetry manuscripts.

**

​
mama calved 

growlers & bergy bits
borne 
of polar ice
covert
ship wreckers 
stealthy 
as love

Donna-Lee Smith 

Donna-Lee Smith is a writer in Montreal, Canada.

**

Lot’s Wife

The story of looking back is a long one. 

Here, ice. Ice in the shape of your once-woman’s face. Your face is looking back, hair a cascade of frozen shape. Ice like cats’ mouths dipped, or pillars from some lost city. Water the colour of dreams and beneath, your body, eroded by salt and water.

The stories of fleeing are long too, painful and happening –

In flight, your man ahead, you look up for a moment to the darkening sky, drop, at your feet, the last loaf of bread, which you grabbed, wrapped in paper, shoved in your bag as you ran out of the house, everything else left – hairbrush, his good shoes, your wedding portrait – and up the hill and away. 

Over time, salt becomes ice, the sharp edges of your dark hair soften, cheekbones more chiseled by wind. Shadows blue in the shade. What was land is now water and ice now water as humans flee the world they have meted out. 

The story of looking back – 

Did you look back, she asks herself again, her thoughts clouds, cold, a loose knot, and mist. Or did you merely stop, bend to retrieve the bread, let your hair fall forward. You know, she tells herself, as she replays the moment again and again, sees her own eyes slide through the veil of hair to look at tortured bodies, the fine pillars of the city become bone and ice. You looked and as you flung your hair aside to hide your looking, became solid, granular, blood unmade, a pillar.  

Thoughts ripple through her, her body and hair merge to water. She knows there is little left of her or the city. Pillars that will melt in this great human reckoning. Iced canopy of hair frozen to the deep, the deep flawed and breaking.

​Yvonne Blomer

​Yvonne Blomer (she/her) lives in Victoria, BC on Lək̓ʷəŋən territory. The Last Show on Earth, her fifth book of poetry was published with Caitlin Press in 2022. She was Victoria’s fourth poet laureate. www.yvonneblomer.com

**

Endgame
 
She will never speak again. As the light fades, she juts her chin forward sphinx-like, glares out of the window at the gathering night. 
 
Her daughters attempt to plump up her crumpled pillow; she lashes out without warning, then freezes, gasps; a slow, shallow sigh.
 
They look on, feeling helpless, desperate to act; whispering to her, they recall their summers of sea pinks and cockles when she would lead them from the farm, down the field to the shore for a picnic; those times when they paddled at high tide. Out of their phones, they summon a pale, monochrome image: sandcastles, buckets, spades, seaweed, seagulls, mud flats, wet feet. In this picture, they are squinting; the sun must have been in their eyes though she is laughing as she holds onto them; they lean towards her, grinning. 
 
She stirs in the bed, glances at the photo; her fingers start to scratch and pick at scabs, pinch loose skin; she scowls, pulling at her nightdress. They stroke her hand; it is paper-thin, ice-cube cold. She tugs herself free, makes a weak fist, shifts her body to face the darkening sky, senses waves crashing over her….
 
In silence, they wait.

Dorothy Burrows

Based in the United Kingdom, Dorothy Burrows enjoys writing flash fiction, short plays and poetry. Her fiction has been published in various journals, including The Ekphrastic Review. She tweets: @rambling_dot

**

Frustration

In one life, I am waking
to the dull ebb & flow of time,
dragging my fingertips along the
evenly corrugated walls in a heat-less
home. In another, the sky thunders w/
promise & a roiling wind buffets each
balustrade of my own making w/
lust, envy & artistry.

I am awake & I am dreaming.
I suppose I am alive.

The floor is littered w/ chances
& I’ll let myself drown
before I walk through that door.

Caitlin M.S. Buxbaum

Caitlin M.S. Buxbaum is a writer and teacher from Wasilla, Alaska. She currently serves as CEO of Red Sweater Press, President of Alaska Writers Guild, and Editor-in-Chief of The Poets' Touchstone, a publication of the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Learn more about her and read more of her work at caitbuxbaum.com.

**


Antarctica, Awakening

I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice.
                  “The Wild Iris” by Louise Gluck
  

I’ve been numb so long 
            buried
 
beneath a terrible weight
            lost to myself 

scoured    simple as the moon
  
                        *
 sensations
             nearly imperceptible    
a wash of warmth
  
                        *
shifts      meltwater    

this white shroud frays
I slough sheets of ice into the black sea
  
                        *
something trembles     cracks

            a glacier slips my shoulder
 
snow rosy with algae
            I remember      a green time
leafy shadows    rain

​Marion Starling Boyer

​Marion Starling Boyer’s Antarctica poems are from Ice Hours, selected by Carol V. Davis for the 2021 Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize and is forthcoming from Michigan State University Press. Boyer is the author of four other poetry collections. A professor emeritus for Kalamazoo Valley Community College, Boyer lives in Twinsburg, Ohio and leads workshops for Lit Cleveland and Lit Youngstown.

**

One Day

It was the hot pink in apricot,
Orange in lemongrass and
The glacier in turquoise,
Colors that mixed into the flowers
As I lay in the yard behind the porch,
No longer in my dream.

The darkness was fading-

Entering the hole, a magical abode
Of families together again,
Of scars cleaned, miseries forgotten.
The tides that once were higher than my reach,
Now settled to a peaceful stream, pristine.

The time was turning immortal-

Seagulls collecting from near and afar
Gliding on the waters,
Arriving at the shore like a plane on the sea.
The cherry blossoms in wait, all the way
To a sudden secret's tree.

Abha Das Sarma

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

​**

 Departure's Girlfriend

                                                          "Down to my boat, my boat
                                                          To see it off, and glad at the thought."
                                                                          W.S. Merwin, Departure's Girlfriend

                                                          "Some say the world will end in fire,
                                                          Some say in ice..."
                                                                          Robert Frost,  Fire and Ice

                                                          "...the poem [Fire and Ice] is a compression
                                                           of Dante's Inferno...like the downward funnel
                                                           of the rings of hell."
                                                                                              John N. Serio   

                                                           "Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain
                                                            I've seen sunny days I thought would never end
                                                            I've seen lonely times I could not find a friend
                                                            But I always thought I'd see you, Baby
                                                            One more time again --"
                                                                               James Taylor, Fire and Rain 

The figures were frozen in a dream, statue-like    the woman with her arms raised,
reaching out to the man    who already has one foot off the pier, on the steps --

the gang plank --  leading to a boat    that would take him from the ancient world
of fiction to the perplexing reality    of contemporary non-fiction, illustrated

by faces that could be altered, digitally, for Facebook    if the story they were living
had to be discontinued    because things never went the right way for Departure's

Girlfriend, whose anonymous identity had been doubled    by an invisible twin
who gives ridiculous advice --    the devil made her do it, he supposed --

sitting on his shoulder opposite the Angel    who always dressed in italics
for poetry, Departure's conversations with his Girlfriend   when she's fictional.

Non-fiction was expensive.    He'd gone over budget for trips and equipment
and when he'd reached out, filled with longing    to the empty side of his lonely

hotel bed, he heard the Devil whispering    C'mon Baby, Light my fire!
He assumed it was his campfire    on the night they couldn't communicate

by cell phone after an argument;    the night he'd heard the serpent-hiss of history,
and froze in fear as a black adder -- gold-gilded by his flashlight --   had wrapped

its coils around his backpack     in memory of Cleopatra, a statuesque shadow
standing in the Greco-Roman doorway of a palace    as he, a voice in his own future,

tried to price boat tickets to Paradise Bay and Harbor....   Was it a dream to wake up
to the ice-blue beauty of ice, fallen, a if from heaven    in the shape of an archway?

To see how nature, as silent as the air in Antarctica    had frozen a piece of the sky,
a spiritual space where one might pray or marry    blue as ice torn from the hem

of Madonna's robe; and blue as the eyes    of Departure's Girlfriend, reflecting
the ocean, filled with light when she saw him.    If the ice were transformed to rock

and stone by some magical act of earthly wizardry    she might be waiting for him
under Darwin's Arch; or become The Morrigu    a tri-partite goddess, walking

across the Irish Sea to Scotland's Highlands on The Giant's Causeway     if she
thought to leave him for the famous Finn McCool.    She knew her dear Departure

had never sailed away by chance    because the world needed sudden fiction --  fast --

                                                                          before the ice was melted by their passion. 

Laurie Newendorp

Laurie Newendorp, often honoured by the Ekphrastic Challenges, has begun to recognize the names of others who appear, regularly, in The Ekphrastic Review.  Her recent book, When Dreams Were Poems, 2020, shows, as do Caponigro's dual photographs of Antarctica, Dreaming, and Waking, how closely related are fiction and non-fiction in the artist's creative imagination.  Her character, "Departure," from W.S. Merwin's poem, "Departure's Girlfriend," has made other appearances in her poetry. Once her companion in South America, this is Departure's first trip to Antarctica.

**

​Frigid 

you look different 
in slumber
the frigid peacefulness 
as you rise from the ripples 

you rise
and offer passage 

i see you as you were
i see you as you are 
i see you 
as you are seen 

a gateway 
empty 

waiting for me
to choose 

perception 
cold 
reality 
refreshing 

true
neither existing
without the other

Sophia Ferello

Sophia Ferello is a college student from Massachusetts, writing for fun while they work to attain their Bachelor's in Culinary Arts. They have never been published before, but they have been writing since they were very young and are excited to finally put their work out into the world.

**

Silent Write                                       
 
Quiet is the night at 2:00 AM 
Its silence thick like jam rolling
off a knife
Here at my desk, by grace of chance, I sit and 
write… looking out black window panes in
North America- no bombs in air
Rise and fall, rise and fall, my breath and pen
the only movement here.
  
On another Continent 
men make munitions smear across the sky 
Flames disintegrating homes and dreams 
in a land of bread and music 
Forever silenced: mother’s voices  
crumble underneath
burned buildings falling walls and windows
Children left alone to scream in 
war raged bloodied streets. 
 
And then there is Antarctica…  
Palatial with the sun’s slow six- month rise 
Waking to peaceful glorious blues that sparkle in 
architectural patience of ice
Millennia serenity…as ancient and scrolled as acanthus leaves  
Magnificent
because here, here on this Continent
no man formally resides.
 
Susan Tenney
 
Susan Tenney is an Award-winning director and choreographer who loves to write poetry. Her ekphrastic poem Saturday Morning Thoughts at Your Doorway Watching You Sleep was chosen by The Poet's Corner in November 2021 for their Poetry in Motion collaboration with the Page Gallery of Camden Maine and her poem Elegy for T. for their event Love Unmasked in February 2021.  She recently completed her first Chapbook: Objects and Other Living Things.
​
**

Ice That Dreamed of Life As Soil

(to John Paul Caponigro Regarding Antarctica Dreaming)

Illusion formed to dupe the eye
of intellect it leads awry,
is image, though of sight unseen,
you've wrought as ruse that you convene,

though artificial, still as art
of "is" and "isn't" to impart
suggestion that the truth might lie
somewhere between "Why not?" and "Why?"

essential to our science quest
and to our faith that fear would wrest
and to the arts that mark our trail
both as the pleasure and travail

of moments that are left enshrined
for those ahead by those behind
like ice that dreamed of life as soil
where limb and leaf could root and moil.

Portly Bard

Portly Bard: Old man.  Ekphrastic fan.

Prefers to craft with sole intent
of verse becoming complement...
...and by such homage being lent...
ideally also compliment...

Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise
for words but from returning gaze
far more aware of fortune art
becomes to eyes that fathom heart.

**


This Shifting Planet

Time stands to attention, poised
at the foot of a Titan,
its hands moving over
the frozen lungs of an ancient land mass
with the wheeze and rasp of the dying.
 
I cover my eyes blindly, seared
by the glacial weight of ice,
its opal sheen pulsing in ribbles
stained with the gloss of crackled-glaze,
a ceramic, freshly cooled from kiln.
 
For eons balance has hung
solid in the cyan air  
its breath of cut crystal a warning
before Earth’s underbelly 
felt its spine slacken, buckle
 
under the sheer mass of it
melting, retreating, leaving
snakes of silt in its gravelled wake
to reveal a single feeble reed
its voice a whimper as the planet shifts.

Kate Young

Kate Young lives in England and has been passionate about poetry since childhood.  Her poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, The Poetry Village, Words for the Wild, Poetry on the Lake, Alchemy Spoon, Dreich, The Poet and Fly on the Wall.  She has had poems in two Scottish Writers Centre chapbooks. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlet A Spark in the Darkness is due to be published by Hedgehog Press. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12p

**


The Fateful Tale of Capt. Robert Falcon Scott, RN
--conjured by the art of John Paul Caponigro:
       Antarctica Waking / Dreaming

Twin photos, blue as the Antarctic Sea,
as if a Greco-Roman architect
designed, awake or dreaming, what we see.

They brought to mind how Nature tossed and wrecked
adventurers, as if a toss of dice.
The quest for glory was its own defect.

Dante knew that Hell is cased in ice,
as cold would kill a frozen man and dog.
Even ships were shattered in this vice.

We have their charts and finely scripted log
for places where a misstep or a fall
would blanket with a trace-erasing fog.

On Exeter Cathedral's silent wall
the sister placed the sledging flag of Scott
who died in one last gamble for it all.

to do not what he willed but what he ought,
while guessing how this fatal trek might close,
barely failing at the goal he sought.

Will we freeze to death or mount a pyre,
a poet asked; but when each breath just froze,
did he still think his world would end in fire?

R.W.Rhodes​

R.W.Rhodes taught global religions for many years at Kenyon College. His poetry and translations have appeared in a number of literary journals, online and in print. While visiting Exeter Cathedral in England, he saw the sledging flag from Capt. Robert Falcon Scott's first exploration of the Antarctic. The photo and digitally altered twin of Antarctic ice done by John Paul Caponigro, opened up dream-like memories of that experience for him.
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John Bradley: Ekphrastic Writing Challenge

4/15/2022

1 Comment

 
Picture
Young Boy Feeding Rabbits, by John Bradley (USA, b. England) 1831

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

The prompt this time is Young Boy Feeding Rabbits, by John Bradley. Deadline is April 29, 2022 .

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


**
​
The Rules

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

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

3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Helping the editor share the time and expenses involved is very much appreciated. There is an easy button to click below to share a five spot through PayPal or credit card. Thank you.

Voluntary Gift of $5 CAD (about $4 USD) With Submission

YES

​4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.

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

5.Include BRADLEY CHALLENGE in the subject line.

6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. Do not send it after acceptance or later; it will not be added to your piece. Guest editors may not be familiar with your bio or have access to archives. We are sorry about these technicalities, but have found that following up, requesting, adding, and changing later takes too much time and is very confusing. 

7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 

8. Deadline is midnight EST, April 29, 2022.

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

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

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

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

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

14. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send Spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! We send a newsletter zero to two times a month, with hopes of more consistency in the future. It updates you on challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, the podcast, and more. You can cancel at any time, of course, but may find yourself back on the list after another submission. We hope you don't cancel because we like to stay in touch occasionally!

​15. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges!
​
16. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages!

17. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.
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Rose Mary Boehm: Ekphrastic Challenge Responses

4/8/2022

0 Comments

 
Editor's Note:

This was painful. It often is, choosing a few from many. But on the occasion of the gorgeous artwork by a  consistently participating and popular challenge poet, we had  heartfelt, personal work meant to honour the art of our beloved Rose. I am thankful to all of you who entered. We went with a large selection but it was still tough to choose. We are grateful to every writer for sharing your gift of words with the world. As always, we strive to strike a balance between supporting regular participants, welcoming new ones, and showcasing different perspectives and readings of the artwork itself. This is not an easy task!

In this case, Rose sent me her own poem about her artwork, and it seemed only fitting to me to show it first, followed by some of your entries.

Thank you all.

​**
Phoenix
 
From the ashes Phoenix rises.
From defeat, strength unfolds its wings.
There is power in forgiveness,
growth through inclusion,
witch-magic in rebirth.

And Phoenix does not rise unarmed,
she is prepared to fend off any new ambush,
soaring into the evening sky like a griffin
on the way to the end of the known earth.

Proud, relentless, only the heart vulnerable,
the intention is noble,
the outcome guaranteed.
From the ashes Phoenix rises.

Rose Mary Boehm

Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was twice nominated for a Pushcart. Her fifth poetry collection, DO OCEANS HAVE UNDERWATER BORDERS, will be published by Kelsay Books in July 2022. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/

Picture
Untitled, by Rose Mary Boehm (Peru, b. Germany) c. early 1980s

​Pinned
 
Hooded       chainmail      feathered mantle
wings spread        pinifer needles      extend
owlish shape-shifter    puffed         to terrify
serious stance      captured prey      faceless
aggression tantamount     to her     survival
pinned for eternity       needled to           art
tapestry frozen in time         vesuvian aviary
 
Julie A. Dickson

Julie A. Dickson is a poet who addresses bullying, animal rights, environment and dabbles in Ekphrastic poetry. Her poems appear in New Verse News, Misfit and The Ekphrastic Review as well as other journals and in full length on Amazon. Dickson holds a BPS in Behavioral Science: Gerontology and works in-home with seniors. She is a past poetry board member, guest editor to two journals and shares her home with two rescued feral cats, Cam and JoJo.

**

Freedom 
 
Heart wings pulse, beat 
every breath a rhythm.  
Whispers scratch, cling  
as cobwebbed veils 
trace prey and paths divert  
like the mighty eagle  
spreads its wings and soars.  
The maiden in her bower 
proclaims shaded victory 
bright eye aflame she  
observes as furtive dance  
evolves and  
prods 
gilded futile lives 
to become 
to be known 
to be free. 

Jane Lang
 
Jane Lang’s work has appeared in online publications including Quill and Parchment, the Avocet, Creative Inspirations, The Ekphrastic Review, and has been published in several anthologies. She has authored two chap books and lives in the Pacific Northwest. ​

**

The First Place

Mail coif of feathers and needle-thin primaries. Webs along with birds and humans and their rehearsed unaffected faces in the event that there is not a war. Hovering is acceptable. Standing is not possible. Face impassive one half covered in mail coif the other half covered by nothing except the elements and the enemies. Perhaps one day the uncovered side will break the law that allows only certain movements and comments; unlikely though it might be possible.
 
One option is hovering full-bore soaring – you will recall standing is illegal. Being held is not illegal. This aided Jimmy immensely in removing its armor. It would land on his open hand gracefully. He'd cup his hands and it would settle in for a quiet, sensitive nap. Sleep needs.
 
I just watched careful to never raise a ruckus.
 
Most of these were rarely glimpsed interlaced manifestations. One night I came to believe in them and one dragged a tail of feathered light by me so fast I think I saw it. So excited I told no one.
 
War came. In the first place there was no surprise involved. In the first place we did what we thought we were supposed to do. This is what preparation is always for. I should tell you here that my lacey friends are able to fly in any direction being as adept forward as backward. Their primaries only look fragile. Sharper than any razor stronger than the strongest tempered steel. Nothing delicate about them aside from their desire to remind us of something we cannot quite pinpoint.
 
The navigator recognized the entrance to hell. Its signal was green. As soon as he and his crew were in they started a campfire. Its signal was green. In the first place they celebrated with dance and seemingly improvised song. Celebrating the light they imagined would return. If it had ever been there in the first place.

Maiden voyage next time we will not return, not without the first place.

John L. Stanizzi

John L. Stanizzi authored eleven collections - Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallelujah Time!, High Tide/Ebb Tide, Chants, Four Bits, Sundowning, POND, and The Tree That Lights the Way Home.  He is widely published, and besides Ekphrastic Review, he has published in Prairie Schooner, American Life In Poetry, New York Quarterly, Cortland Review, Poet Lore, Italian Americana, and many others. His translations appear widely in Italy. His nonfiction has been published in Literature and Belief, Stone Coast Review, Ovunque Siamo, Evening Street, Potato Soup Journal, after the pause, and others.  Potato Soup Journal named his story Pants “​The Best of 2020” and it appeared in their “Best of…” anthlogy for 2020. A former New England Poet of the Year, John received a Fellowship in 2021 from Connecticut Office of the Arts.  Lives in Coventry, CT., with his wife, Carol.  https://johnlstanizzi.com

**

The Phantom Bird


A songless fledgling in a ghostly garden,
as if a drawing made with x-ray lines,
emerges out of shadows bound by dreams.
This is the darkened wood in which it hovers,
interstices of night between the trees,
whose leaves are feathers so precisely splayed,
And here a woman who remembers this.
Her breath and pauses punctuate these words,
telling many tales of silences.
Her unseen arms are arched above her skull.
She tips her mask-like face to that slow fan,
descending overhead -- the shuddering --
a solemn touch of slowly flexing wings.
O wonder, when she sees they are her own.

R.W. Rhodes

R.W. Rhodes is a retired professor of global religions. His poetry has appeared in various journals: The Montreal Review, Better Than Starbucks, and Halcyon Days, among other publications. He was the third-place winner of the 2022 Society of Classical Poets Translation Competition.  He is the collaborator for an art/poetry exhibition, Specimens and Reflections, that will take place in September at Fairfield University Gallery.

**

False Flight

I had two wings,
Yours were larger.
Kept me from things,
Made life harder. 

I thought I’d soar,
I slowly crashed.
My eyes were yours,
Fears swiftly stashed. 

I could not move,
Doubt smothered me. 
Greatness to prove,
So high the fee. 

Lines firmly drawn,
Time wept release.
Somewhere a dawn,
Somewhere my peace. 

Corrie Pappas

Corrie Pappas is a small business owner living in New England.  She self-published the children’s book, Come Along and Dream, several years ago and has been writing poetry since childhood. 

**

Supreme Being
 
Fractured 
face--
Phoenix rising 
 
First 
of your kind
In beauty
unsurpassed
 
What fire 
bent to your
purification
 
What shadow
of deliverance
among
the ashes
 
Arrived
in recent
decades
 
burning scent
Hot tongs 
spent
in renewal
 
And marked
by a new
sunrise
 
Up, up--
You rise
supreme
 
Carole Mertz
​
Carole Mertz, author of Color and Line (Kelsay Books) writes in Parma, Ohio. A recent poem on a migraine brought her a Pushcart Prize nomination. Carole reads (in poetry) for Kallisto Gaia Press and the Julia Darling Prize.

**

Gift of a Dream
 
From the unbroken darkness 
a mile or two below 
my waking thoughts
 
the feathers of the dream
angel drift upward 
spiraling in a thermal
 
and gathering into the shape 
of a woman running 
against clouds of newspaper
 
sailing down the sidewalk.
She stumbles into my arms, 
her eyes amethyst, her hair 
 
bound with a black cloth, 
her hands holding my
shoulders as she pulls me
 
into her arms in a green
rowboat, water spilling over 
the gunwales, trying 
 
to swallow us as we cling 
to each other, to our breathy 
whispers, deep kisses, and tears. 
 
Malcolm Glass

Malcolm Glass has written and published poems and stories in many journals and reviews for the past sixty-five years. His thirteenth book, Mirrors, Myths, and Dreams, a collection of poems, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2018.

**

Tankas
 
My lover, lover,
there’s feathers above my head.
One eye is open.
My unmasked face wants you
but half is shaded.
 
**
 
When I paint violet,
the canvas is an angel.
The hopeful couples
have never seen dreams my way,
have never seen snow dust wings.

John Milkereit

John Milkereit lives in Houston, Texas working as a mechanical engineer and has completed a M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. His work has appeared in various literary journals including Naugatuck River Review, Panoply, San Pedro River Review and previous issues of The Ekphrastic Review. His next full-length collection of poems, A Comfortable Place with Fire, will be published in 2023.

**

She Was Once a Bird

A girl is born
With sparse mousy-brown feathers,
Laughing eyes, a secret charisma
Born as sacrifice to the Gods 
Of domestic terrorisim
A Wren, she used to be
Kicked from the nest too early
When the mother-love couldn’t stretch
Across eight squawking nestlings
The one terrorized, stuck to the side, 
Was pushed out, flipping, stumbling, then realizing
An awkward flight, fraught with love and terror.

She was a bird, nevertheless, and meant to fly
Yet she flitted, searching for something warm
She used to know, burrowed into her brothers 
And sisters, content and covered, anonymous

The noticing rendered her real, and disposable 
Immediately perceived as wasting too much space
Released from comfort and captivity
She used her wings only sparingly- 
Not wanting to wear them out like so many
Other welcomes. 

Free things intrigued her: blackberries, night sonnets,
Shiny glass, clean water in concrete baths,
Abandoned domiciles, suet and seeds

When surprising new plumage appeared, she preened
Puffing out her tiny chest, she attracted attention
Such a light-boned, creature, chattering to herself
A singular man honed in, startling her stock-still
He hovered over her body, stiff on a branch, and wished.
Unfamiliar appendages began to sprout:
Wings into half- arms, lengthened, thickened legs, a widened head
Hands, ears, larger soft brown eyes, a huge heart
Wrapped in a soft suburban blanket
She soon forgot the joy of effortless flight-
Disremembered the enormous freedom of climbing white sky
She hid shiny things only she could retrieve
Feathered her nest, waiting and wondering:
Would her daughters inherit wings?

​Debbie Walker-Lass

Debbie Walker-Lass is a literary essayist, poet and short story writer. Her work has appeared in several journals and magazines, including The Ekphrastic Journal, Poetry Quarterly, Haiku Universe, and Natural Awakenings, Atlanta. After a long career in Supported Employment and Mental Health, Debbie spends her time reading, writing, and creating jewelry from vintage pieces. 

**

​A Mythical Creature of Unknown Power

When the prowling starts, I swoosh Cassie onto my shoulders and we lace fingers into wings. We are a mythical creature of unknown power. As the creature’s head, Cassie must stoop a little under the lintel, and as the creature’s body I must hip the door shut on its latch as we fly from the monster to our magical underground realm.

Back before our little family realised it was lacking a Cassie, Mum mosaicked the basement walls for me with leftover paints trollied round by Fiona, our favourite neighbour. Dad used to say we’d struck gold with Fiona. Mum would just smile in that way she had, like she knew a whole lot more than she needed to say. In the evenings, I’d anticipate her key in the front door. Leg it up the rubber-edged steps to waylay her.

We anticipate different things now, Cassie and me. We become moths avoiding light when the air starts tasting bitter.

Beyond our whispers, we can hear the empty waltz of Mum’s yellow rocking chair in the kitchen. A bottle rolls overhead, garbling its hollow rhythm, and from its sticky-sweet mouth I picture the last spits of poison dulling to oblivion.

Cassie wiggles her drawing at me. It’s us, our rainbow wings outstretched behind a tiny, shuttered house. “When proper Daddy comes back I’m gonna give him this picture,” she says, and her feather-thumb goes to her mouth the way it does when he’s reading her a story, pyjama-snuggled and leaning in to every sober word. Outside the house our old red truck hovers, fresh with fat tyres. A tall, smiling man waves from behind a giant steering wheel.

Sad-Monster-Daddy is tired now. My chest vibrates to his three-up-two-down stumbles on the stairs above, rousing the truth-genie I keep corked up inside.

I drum my hooves on the vinyl floor. “Wanna fly up and get some cocoa before bed?” Cassie nods and raises her arms. I swear she’s growing bigger and heavier by the hour. Nearly too heavy for mythical flight. After cocoa I’ll heave the bottle bin to the end of the alley for its fortnightly pick up, past Fiona’s back door. The light from her art studio a glowing invitation.

For now, though, we wheel and swoop. While upstairs’ snores begin to fade, like the closing beats of a secret countdown.

Linda Grierson-Irish​

Linda Grierson-Irish lives in Shropshire, UK. Her stories have appeared in various journals and anthologies, including Ellipsis Zine, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, Flash Frontier, Bath Flash Fiction anthologies, Reflex Fiction, Aesthetica Creative Writing Anthology. She has been included on the BIFFY50 (Best British and Irish Flash Fiction) 2018-19, and received two honourable mentions for Best Microfiction 2019.

**


Filaments

When God became His life begun,
from filaments He had it spun
in saline depths forever dark
where He alone could be the spark

unseen that would begin design
of threads that weave to redefine
and slowly rise to seek the light 
as ecosystem day and night

of tiny forms to swarm the seas
at first and then the lift of breeze
to spiral skyward free from brine
then fall to land and realign

as fertile germ forevermore
the means to thrive and wings to soar
of life enlarging both ashore
and in the blue from brim to floor

creating likeness slowly drawn
that filaments were moved to spawn.

Portly Bard

Portly Bard: Old man.  Ekphrastic fan.

Prefers to craft with sole intent
of verse becoming complement...
...and by such homage being lent...
ideally also compliment...

Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise
for words but from returning gaze
far more aware of fortune art
becomes to eyes that fathom heart.

**


Kashmir

I live split. My head laced.
Two sisters in their struck

Memory. From the round 
Table. Knight at the Ark. 

Ark Angel:
She shall appear self-strange

Her wings, static of
The sky raised. 

Angelic light should permeate her. 
Autodidactic, idiosyncratic, anathema. 

Some mythic beast, some mammory. 
From the pharmakon, chronological 

Anamnesis. 
Third eye, her bird throat

Voice striated, in-describe
Her blue eyes rimmed with kohl. 

On sight, try flight for the first time. 
Evangelical, ethereal, antimony. 

Healer, medicine girl-liquor
Of the good kind, pawned Neptune

Akhenaton off, doll where you go
A concept all way cross my planet

‘n back to wade, Episcopalian
Eyes scowls in gold lettering.

Hypokaimenon- a material sub-
Stratum, what grounds the field

Goes under us ‘n goners?
Sail as if this pulse

Were punctuate, and yes
She goes underground, ecstatic

Plunge of sweet pine bristles.
Steep hills in Kashmir valley

Where the river runs glen dry
Upstream fish-eyed, the whole

Embrace of another inside healer
Versed in psychiatry,

Professional feeling
The question, presentation,

The approach, a practiced glance.
Challenge, Jasper, why?

Time- flash hands changing in the pan. 
If I ever washed them, a different river already

Stuck out like serration- I rinsed
Lank, walking forth to the good cold water

And stood there, and like talus there was a ledge.
I didn’t know where that ledge was.

Jasper Glen

​Jasper Glen is a poet from Vancouver, Canada. His poetry appears in The Antonym and Island Writer Magazine. 

**


Atremble

i
Hold the white dove
with both hands
forming a bowl,
fingers linked
at the front.
Feel the flutter
of its heart
aginst your fingers.
It's more scared
of you than you are
of hurting it.
Breathe.  Relax.
When the time comes
release it with
a gentle upward motion.
It knows what to do.


ii
Have you ever held
chainmail? Felt
its cool smoothness,
the metal heaviness?
Links that flow like
silvered satin.
The weight of it pulls
down on the head, sits
heavy on brow, flows
over your shoulders.
Power. Responsibility.


iii
A full moon eye
stares from half 
a face, the rest
clouded, unreadable.
Too much sadness.
Only sibyls see
what the future
holds and they
speak in Greek,
peppering riddles.
On hearing, hearts
of warriors and doves
tremble.

Emily Tee

Emily Tee spent her working life wrangling numbers.  Now retired, she has recently started writing poetry.  She has had several pieces published in The Ekphrastic Review challenges and will have some others in print later this year with other publications. She lives in England.

**

 I Used to Fly

No predator I, without talons     
Nor piercing beak to capture prey but preyed upon 
By birders and other collectors. 
 
I used to fly with velveteen wings
Now delicately skewered one feather at a time
To faux velvet canvas under glass. 
 
I used to glide with radiant eyes  
Through jet streams in vast cobalt skies and starry nights
 Half sighted now and punctured through.
 
I used to soar from wind swept plains 
Through forests to the timber line of mountain tops
Majestic reverence no longer mine.
 
Revered though still while on display
Where passer-bys observe my splayed magnificence
Soaring now in eyes’ imagination.

Karen Fitzgerald

**

Last Dream

Perhaps
you think
you heard
soft whispers
in the parlor,
light footsteps
down the hall,
the brush
of sassafras
scratching against
bedroom windows
in an hour when
you no longer
are consoled
by silence--
music you can’t
sleep through.
In these restless
midnight minutes
cast in a silky
backdrop, a chorus
of angels sings
Hallelujah
while you try
to learn
their names
on this late
April evening.

Dr. Jim Brosnan

Dr. Jim Brosnan is the author of Nameless Roads (2019). His poems have appeared in the Aurorean (US), Crossways Literary Magazine (Ireland), Eunoia Review (Singapore), Literary Yard (India), Nine Muses (Wales,) Scarlet Leaf Review (Canada), Strand (India), The Madrigal (Ireland), The Ekphrastic Review (Canada), and Voices of the Poppies (United Kingdom). He holds the rank of full professor at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI.

**

By Another Name
 
In front of Smitty’s Bar on the beach 
yellowed by the wash over mudflats 
called a nicer name than the muck 
 
Mother used as a facial 
I remember the twist of her hips 
as she waded from one rippled expanse 
 
of sand to the next and rose out 
of depressions where oysters dwelled
as her face dried in late morning 
 
and began to crack in lines 
from eyes and nose until 
they settled below her mouth.                                    
 
I never patched them with thread
just let them stay at the tide’s reach
as it made its way to steps 
 
that topped the bulkhead 
everyone called a different name  
but I held fast against the breach. 
 
 
Kyle Laws
 
Kyle Laws is based out of Steel City Art Works in Pueblo, CO where she directs Line/Circle: Women Poets in Performance. Her collections include Beginning at the Stone Corner (River Dog, 2022), The Sea Is Woman (Moonstone Press, 2021, winner of its 2020 award), Uncorseted (Kung Fu Treachery Press, 2020), Ride the Pink Horse (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019), Faces of Fishing Creek (Middle Creek Publishing, 2018), This Town: Poems of Correspondence coauthored with Jared Smith (Liquid Light Press, 2017), So Bright to Blind (Five Oaks Press, 2015), and Wildwood (Lummox Press, 2014). With eight nominations for a Pushcart Prize and one for Best of the Net, her poems and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. She is editor and publisher of Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press.

**

Firebrand
Remembering Brünhilde, Njal & the Völsungs   

Poured evenly across a brass plate, 
a cobalt black layer of waxy resist 
vacuum sealed the surface, etching needle 
scratching artistic details among Viking runes;

link upon link, rings linked with rings,
drenched in ferric chloride, boiling water
& baking soda flushed away the etchant,
revealed a Rhine Maiden’s leather braces;

scalds lionized Brünhilde’s fiercely fair power;
brandishing a bright spear, the shield maiden 
spread & fanned wings like a golden eagle,
steely swan feathers jutting outside divine armor.

Covering & protecting the Valkyrie 
crown to collarbone, a chain mail coif 
forged on Midgard’s anvil, annealed 
with prudence, galvanized in patience, 

tempered by good judgement & distinguished 
favor ushered men like moths towards flames
as she rode though stiff winds, scanning every
still breeze in search of steeds unsaddled--

warriors fallen—choosing & guiding the slain
into Valhalla’s all to brief hereafter spent boasting
of battles, revisiting sagas—embellishing personal 
exploits--drinking & feasting until Ragnorök.

Sterling Warner

An award-winning Washington-based author, poet, and educator, Sterling Warner’s works have appeared literary magazines, journals, and anthologies including Trouvaille Review, Shot Glass Journal,Danse Macabre, Ekphrastic Review, and Sparks of Calliope. Warner’s collections of poetry include Rags and Feathers, Without Wheels, ShadowCat, Edges, Memento Mori, Serpent’s Tooth, and Flytraps: Poems (2022)—as well as Masques: Flash Fiction & Short Stories. Currently, Warner writes, participates in “virtual” poetry readings, and enjoys retirement in Washington.

**


​
0 Comments

John Paul Caponigro: Ekphrastic Writing Challenge

4/1/2022

2 Comments

 
Picture
Antarctica Waking (unaltered photography), by John Paul Caponigro (USA) contemporary
Picture
Antarctica Dreaming (digitally altered version), by John Paul Caponigro (USA) contemporary
We are excited to offer the photography of one of our readers and writers, John Paul Caponigro, for our challenge this week.

John Paul Caponigro is an internationally collected visual artist and published author. He leads unique adventures in the wildest places on earth to help participants creatively make deeper connections with nature and themselves. View his TEDx and Google talks at johnpaulcaponigro.com.

"I chose the twin images because they’re pivotal in dual series of images - one nonfiction and the other fiction. It was breath-taking when we saw it and that ice can look like Greco-Roman architecture still astonishes me. I’m writing about these images myself. That could set up an interesting hall of mirrors in our individual and collective memory palaces." John Paul Caponigro

**

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

The prompt this time is Antarctica Waking/Antarctica Dreaming, by John Paul Caponigro. Deadline is April 15, 2022 .

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


**
​
The Rules

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

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

3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Helping the editor share the time and expenses involved is very much appreciated. There is an easy button to click below to share a five spot through PayPal or credit card. Thank you.
​​

Voluntary gift of $5 CAD with submission.

GIVE
​4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.

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

5.Include CAPONIGRO CHALLENGE in the subject line.

6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. Do not send it after acceptance or later; it will not be added to your piece. Guest editors may not be familiar with your bio or have access to archives. We are sorry about these technicalities, but have found that following up, requesting, adding, and changing later takes too much time and is very confusing. 

7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 

8. Deadline is midnight EST, April 15, 2022.

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

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

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

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

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

14. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send Spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! We send a newsletter zero to two times a month, with hopes of more consistency in the future. It updates you on challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, the podcast, and more. You can cancel at any time, of course, but may find yourself back on the list after another submission. We hope you don't cancel because we like to stay in touch occasionally!

​15. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges!
​
16. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages!

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