​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 All This Glamour, by Derrick Hickman. Deadline is June 11, 2021 .

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

The Rules

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

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

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

​4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.

Send your work to 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  HICKMAN WRITING 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, June 11, 2021.

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.

Congratulations to our ekphrastic  Bird Watching writing contest winners!

Barbara Ponomareff is our winner for flash fiction.

D. Walsh Gilbert is our winner for poetry.

Scroll down to read the winning entries below.

Many thanks to our special guest judges: Tricia Marcella Cimera for poetry, and Karen Schauber for flash fiction.

The Ekphrastic Review simply asked the judges to choose their favourite work in the category of their expertise. We did not specify any other instructions, or give them a criteria to work with. How they decided to read the works, contemplate them, and choose the winning entry was entirely their call.

As editor of this journal, reading hundreds of poems and stories every single month, I know we are a magnet for incredible creativity and talent. Whittling down a barrage of bird watching entries into a few for each category was tough enough. (Read all of the flash fiction finalists here. Read all of the poetry finalists here.)

Congratulations to  Barbara Ponomareff and D. Walsh Gilbert for your outstanding contributions. Congratulations to all of our finalists. (Read the flash fiction finalists here, and the poetry finalists here.) Congratulations to everyone who entered the Bird Watching contest, because creating new art from art is what this is all about, after all.

Barbara's story will be published by Karen Schauber in her flash fiction column at The Miramichi Reader. Debbie's poem will be featured in Tricia Marcella Cimera's Fox Poetry Box. Both will receive a $100 prize. Congratulations again!

A million thanks again to our judges, and to everyone reading and writing ekphrastic.

Tricia Marcella Cimera:

I read all the amazing finalist poems blindly.  I read them multiple times and all struck me in different ways, like the wings or songs of different birds.  The one that haunted me the most, stuck with me the most, made me feel intensely about both birds and poetry, was "Woman with a Bird Cage,"  by D. Walsh Gilbert.  The feelings of wistfulness, sorrowfulness, hopefulness, taking flight, opening a door, breaking free, as well as the gorgeous alongside comparison to plants and flowers was overpowering to me.  I felt this poem.  It is beautiful on many levels.  The language is gorgeous, the homage/inspiration to the seed painting by József Rippl-Rónai is strong, the subtlety coupled with accessibility makes for an understandable yet enigmatic poem.  I feel it is very special.

Karen Schauber:

What a wonderful showing of talent and enthusiasm for the flash fiction form. Thank you, Lorette, for inviting me to judge this selection of flash fiction finalists. The Ekphrastic Review invites such imagined and well-crafted responses to artwork. 

It is a privilege to be asked to judge someone else's work, and I am careful with this trust. What speaks to one judge may elude another. And although there is only one winner here, several of the entries show genuine merit. Voice, authenticity, along with powerful imagery and emotion always shine through. Keep in mind that judging is a subjective process. So, if your piece did not rise to the top in this ekphrastic contest, it may very well in the next one with a different judge who brings a different sensibility and aesthetic. Please submit again.

What I look for in a winning flash fiction is a story that responds most closely to the selected artwork: a piece that is beautifully written either in its simplicity or sumptuous imagery—a demonstration of its intentional word choice, a story that brings out the emotive reach of the painting, and a story that invites the reader to explore the recesses of their own imagination in-between the lines and white spaces. For me a flash fiction must present a full-arc -a beginning, middle, and end- layered, and with more to discover in each subsequent read. It should not feel rushed but carefully crafted. And be evident that it could not have been written in any other form than concision. By the end of the piece, something at its core should have undergone a transformation (either internal or external, imagined or proscribed, far-reaching or miniscule). Above all, the writer's delight / obsession with the flash fiction form should come through. ​

"Stepping on the Throat of Their Song" by Barbara Ponomareff is a marvel. From the title to its final utterance, the reader slips through the seam into a dreamy and nightmarish sensory experience, a world of carnage and devastating beauty. The language of death here is sensorial, brutal, exacting, and exquisite. The words feel handpicked, but never overwritten; the imagery indelible— "its limp neck still droops like a spent rope", "colours from madder-rose to a pale shade of lemon", "a whittled willow branch that pierces each throat", " deep cinnabar colour, toxic", "Night still sticks like pitch to the background of the scene".... It all works like alchemy to bring the reader to the hawk's "head averted from the carnage to let his all-knowing eye focus just beyond what he did", with the complicity of the large white dinner napkin (which shows up twice in this very brief piece), to drive home its powerful message—"How careless death makes us." The artful use of the hermit crab form here is unexpected following such deft construction of the lyrical narrative. In a mere 360 words, Ponomareff has invigorated Clara Peeters' 1611 painting. A perfect pairing.

Barbara Ponomareff

Barbara Ponomareff lives in southern Ontario, Canada. By profession a child psychotherapist, she has been delighted to pursue her life-long interest in literature, art and psychology since her retirement.  The first of her two published novellas dealt with a possible life of the painter J.S. Chardin. Her short stories, memoirs and poetry have appeared in various literary magazines and anthologies. At present, she is translating modern German poetry.

**

Read all of the flash fiction finalists here.

Read all of the poetry finalists here.

This painting by Istvan Farkas was previously unknown to most of the writers who responded to it, according to the many notes I received. My great passion, perhaps even bigger than creating my own art or writing my prose poems and small stories, is to invite others into the paintings I love. 
 
When my father, partial to landscapes or Biblical scenes, began to scrutinize pop art and urban works at the fairs I dragged him to, my heart sang! When my staunch modernist peers melt in the presence of a dusty Dutch still life, I feel something I can’t even explain. 
 
My intention is always to coax onlookers into a hidden world of secrets, into the beauty and pain inside art. Art is everything- it is history, it is biography, it is culture, it is faith, it is politics, it is war, it is family, it is aesthetic, it is place,  it is imagination, it is story. 
 
Farkas’ works resonate with me emotionally- they are simple gestures of colour that come together to suggest a story or scene that we can all transform into a recognizable moment in our own lives. Yet behind the scenes is where the terrible truth lies- a man whose words were immortalized in a smuggled letter from his death bound train to Auschwitz, after surviving for a moment the murder of his wife.
 
Art is about these epic narratives, but it isn’t only that. The horrific ending of Farkas’ story is not the only element in his story. We are made up of much more ordinary moments, too, and they are just as essential to life. The small sorrows and flickers of beauty captured in each of his works is as important to art appreciation as the big tragedies of history are. 

We received so many entries for this artwork-I was amazed. We had many new names and many familiar ones. I tried to include a large number and variety of works this time to honour how much work you created and shared. As always, I am so sorry to those I did not include. It is tremendously difficult to choose from so many talented takes, and I can't include them all!  
 
The satisfaction of belonging to a community of like-minded writers is immense. And reading all the different perspectives and discoveries on a work of art is an incredible experience, one I get to share with you and with the world. I discover every painting anew with each submission of poetry and prose. Thank you so very much for your participation and for being part of the Ekphrastic family.
 
love, Lorette

On the Road Between their Houses 
 
The weep of green on the grass, the smell of damp branches heavy in the air, and that’s where the two neighbors meet. 

“Sky sure cried its eyes out,” Mrs. Smith says.

“Your fence, the storm curled and broke it.” Mrs. Jones says. “You don’t want to leave it open like that.”
 
“I think open can be good” Mrs. Smith says. “Life is so big and the road we are on goes farther than us, is bigger than us.”

“I looked out my window during the storm,” Mrs. Jones says, “the road down there is washed away.” She shakes off the mud that has caked on her shoes. “You can’t have buckets of rain and not lose something,” she says. “It’s a law, like love not lasting forever.”

Mrs. Smith raises her hand for a moment, as if to comfort Mrs. Jones. Instead, she says, “your husband will get tired of that young girl and come back.”

Mrs. Jones inhales deep, as if stuffing the leftover storm into her lungs. “If he does, there will just be another.” She looks up at the sky, still bruisey with clouds. “Your husband,” she says, “make sure he fixes the fence before he runs off on you.”

Mrs. Smith walks down to where the water has stopped the road, the road she could have sworn would always be there. She leans over and looks at her reflection, behind her the clouds, a murky grey now in the dirtwater and lord only knows what other storms they are holding. 

Francine Witte
 
Francine Witte’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Mid-American Review, and Passages North. Her latest books are Dressed All Wrong for This (Blue Light Press,) The Way of the Wind (AdHoc fiction,) and The Theory of Flesh (Kelsay Books.) Her chapbook, The Cake, The Smoke, The Moon (flash fiction) will be published by ELJ September, 2021. She is flash fiction editor for Flash Boulevard and The South Florida Poetry Journal. She lives in NYC.

**

A Path Home
 
There were so many black clouds,
so many storms. Not just hurricanes
and polar freezes. A life-threatening illness
locked us down. A court case loomed.
We wore fear draped around our shoulders,
tucked under overcoats. Any misguided word
created despair or released boiling anger.
 
We stood back-to-back, unable to face
opposition. Unable to move backward
or forward. Unable to trudge the path
toward home, its white-washed comfort 
questionable. Was the deep purple horizon
winter’s sunset or sunrise? No matter.
We waited for the clouds to lift,
for spring to deliver its dark green promise.
 
Sandi Stromberg
 
Sandi Stromberg’s poetry has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and for 2020 Best of the Net. She is a dedicated contributor to The Ekphrastic Review and recently contributed a Throwback Thursday (May 22). In addition to The Ekphrastic Review, her poetry has appeared in many small journals and anthologies, including San Pedro River Review, The Ocotillo Review, Houston Chronicle-San Antonio Express-News, Words & Art, Visual Verse, Weaving the Terrain, Enchantment of the Ordinary, and in Dutch in the Netherlands in Brabant Cultureel and Dichtersbankje (the Poet’s Bench).

**

Wilderness of Pain

They were sisters in shelter,
comrades in faith, hated in
the narrow eyes of the world.

Each day a deathwatch within
ghetto walls, where screams
were silenced and battered,

bodies of Jews stockpiled like 
old newspapers on storefronts,
a warning they were next in line

for their only crime: being a Jew.
Now they are strangers free
to wander in a wilderness of pain,

where their safety still thrives
on secrets, and creatures of fear
that may still lurk in the sands 

of uncertainty. Jews pass each 
other, faces shadowed by sun, 
bodies bent in fear of a path

that may lead to the past. Their
storm’s been relentless, their feet
now unsteady on solid ground, but

like G-d’s creatures left untethered by
the cruelties of mankind, Jews will survive
the wilderness of pain.

Shelly Blankman
​
Shelly Blankman lives in Columbia, Maryland, with her husband of 40 years, three rescue cats and a foster dog. They have two sons, Richard and Joshua, who are currently quarantined in New York and Texas, respectively. Shelly’s educational and career paths have followed public relations and journalism, but her first love has always been poetry. Her work has been published in such publications as New Verse News, Halfway Down The Stairs, and The Ekphrastic Review. Richard and Joshua recently published her first book of poetry, Pumpkinhead.

**

After the Storm
 
Past the charred picket fence
 
the iridescent green grass
follows the path
of the wet mirrored walkway
as the purple haze
descends from the black clouds
enshrined around the milky chateau
      with the dark roof
 
two gentle figures whisper
in passing upon the bridge
their ghost like faces
revealing the dread of the storm
 
who has died
who has lived
in this eerie opaque light
 
Only a strange mumble is heard
unintelligibly pronounced
for these are spirits
that have
just passed
stuck in a limbo
while they wait
their fate
their judgement to date
 
Will it be in heaven or hell
maybe purgatory!
 
Gold lite shaded
black crowned cap
with umbrella in hand
shrouded cloak
next to a purpurean robe
with a dark collared hat 
they walk along the ancient path
 
May their graves be tall
with the cross
as their spirits descend or ascend
to the destiny they deserve
 
Mea culpa
  Mea culpa
Please!
   in chant
they pray
 
As they walk
   along
              the
                     path
In the iridescent
green
purple haze!

James N. Hoffman

James N Hoffman is retired and lives with his wife in Ocean City, Maryland. He has an MA in Applied Psychology and a BA in Philosophy.  He would have liked to have been a painter.  "But alas, I was not talented in that way.  Fortunately, I learned to paint with words."

**

It Isn't Natural

Mrs. Wolfner turned up her collar with one hand, the day’s parcels nestled firmly in the other. Her boots squished rhythmically as she made her way down the muddy lane. The storm had let up just as she left the shops, so she wouldn’t be drenched on the walk home, but the unseasonably cold wind cut through her coat, tugging at her bones with its frigid fingers. She’d overheard Mr. László complaining about it at the pub when she’d popped in there for a pint, her last stop of the day. 
 
“All this thunder and wind in June,” he’d roared, beer spilling out of his mug. “It isn’t natural!” 
 
“Not much is natural anymore, László,” said Simon the bartender. “Did you see the sunrise this morning? Red as pig’s blood. They’re angry about the war, I tell you.” 
 
According to Simon, small creatures who lived in the sky controlled what happened on Earth—a modern version of the gods on Mt. Olympus, as he’d once explained it to Mrs. Wolfner. It was unfathomable, of course—but, then again, so was this war; they were almost a year into it, and still, no one in the village knew what caused it, so when she lay awake at night unable to sleep, she sometimes wondered why Simon’s ideas couldn’t be true. Every day there was more news and all of it bad. Soon there wouldn’t be a woman left in the whole country who hadn’t lost someone. She’d heard rumors of women who had lost everything and had withered away—the flesh sloughed off their bones, their souls evaporated, their bodies reduced to empty cages—unable to live or die. Mrs. Wolfner had never actually seen one and refused to accept them as anything but rumors—the alternative was just too horrible.
 
It wasn’t as though she didn’t know what it was like to lose a loved one; her own dear József died three years ago—but he wasn’t mowed down in some faraway field under a useless banner or slaughtered in his sleep in a night raid. They’d lived long, full lives together—perhaps a little less full than they would have liked, as they never had the children they desperately desired, but they’d managed. No, she was one of the lucky ones. She couldn’t blame the other women for losing themselves in their grief. 
 
Mrs. Wolfner shivered. Just a few more minutes and she’d be home, she could see it up ahead. It was an old house with a ramshackle fence that she never seemed to get around to mending, and it was drafty in the winter—and in June, it turned out—but the kitchen had an enormous fireplace and her woodshed was still well-stocked. The sight of the house just ahead conjured images of hot tea and a roaring fire. Mrs. Wolfner picked up her pace when another figure appeared around the bend in the lane: a woman, dressed in a long, mud-splattered dress. Her black fur coat, which looked like it was once elegant but was now in tatters, was open to the cold.
 
She’ll catch her death like that, Mrs. Wolfner thought. She lifted her head to nod politely, but when she saw the woman’s face, she froze in the middle of the lane. It was not a woman, but a corpse. Its cavernous eye sockets were fixed straight ahead; one gloved hand gripped tightly around a brown umbrella. It gave no indication that it had seen Mrs. Wolfner, though it passed her so closely that it brushed her sleeve. 
 
A chill that had nothing to do with the wind shot up her arm and into her heart. She clutched her chest as she turned to watch the figure continue on its way down the lane. She tried to remember who had lost someone recently, but it was as though the brief encounter had frozen her ability to think. Everything around her—the lane, the village in the distance, the hills, brilliant green from all the rain—disappeared. All that remained was the corpse’s chalky, hollow cheeks, bared teeth, and despair so palpable, Mrs. Wolfner’s left arm felt cold for weeks. 

Carmen Catena

Carmen Catena is a writer, teacher, and TCK currently living in Colorado. When she's not hiking or chasing her toddler, she's working on her first novel. Find her on Twitter @ carmcatena 

**

The Lonely Path 
 
On the hem of her corn-coloured dress, 
mud from the path, the fuss of speckled  
indignations, chore for a brighter day. 
 
Above the village, on the brow of the hill 
an old woman in purple, eyes begging  
for connection, her marble presence ignored. 
 
That storm will never pass, 
thought the older woman passing, clutching  
her umbrella, woe and anger still painting the sky. 
 
She heard her name as a whisper, soft and fragile  
from that distant child. The child whose body heat  
warmed her in the black of night. 
 
That child with laughter, innocent and pure  
as a babbling stream. Mirror to her sunshine  
and freedom before her childhood was taken. 
 
Motherly chores bequeathed, whose weight hung  
as heavily on her young shoulders then as the fox fur 
capelet did now, black and thick with rain, like grief. 
 
How she had tried to replace a mother, 
lost on a day like this, those lost years ago. 
First time she had to walk this path. 
 
All that sacrifice, that surrogate love, 
repaid with betrayal, another bereavement 
that had scorched her heart. 
 
Thunder pulsing through her veins, 
her brow knotting with the questions left unasked, 
She never taught me how to forgive. 
 
She no longer brought flowers when she trudged  
up the hill, after a lifetime of pilgrimage 
her sense of duty was enough. 
 
The old woman in purple stood in the shadow  
of the black tree framed by a black sky, mourning  
the loss of two mothers and a sister. 
 
Andy Eycott

Andy is from the UK. He lives and works in South East London. He has appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies including; Obsessed with Pipework, The Cannon's Mouth, Orbis, The Dawntreader, Worktown Words, The Poetry Kit, Snakeskin and Sentinel Literary Quarterly. ​

​**

After the Storm

he carved “Pádraig” patiently
into a plank of black bog oak 
she watched with pride 
he fixed it to his yawl
named after his father 
she had prayed 
he would never go to sea. 
 
no survivors
no bodies on the beach
no funeral 
no grave 
no stone
the dark rain
smudged away her world
 
the ancient oak was found 
and fixed above her hearth
a place to light candles 
pray
remember 
and mourn  
lost lives

Robert Joynson

Robert Joynson wrote poetry for 50 years with no intention of publication. For the last few years, as a member of poetry groups in Louth, Lincolnshire, and the instigator of several performance poetry events, he has decided to expose his poetry to the critical gaze of the wider world. 

**

After the Storm
 
A ghost town. No lights in windows of tall, stone buildings; just sluggish sunshine behind painted clouds that are charcoaled, stained, still gathering; a long, livid bruise purpling a disturbing sky. The land too looks sick: a vivid swathe of toxic green, as if that heavy downpour had released something other than rain for passing ducks to bathe in.
 
So where are the ducks, dogs, cats, children, men, babies? Where are the cars, bicycles, delivery vans, wheelbarrows, the ladders, the horses, the second-hand carts? Where are the window cleaners? Where are the housekeepers to beat the living daylights out of hand-woven antique rugs nibbled by ravenous moths? Where are the soaked shirts, left out on washing lines to drip? Where are the cafes and mended bentwood chairs? Where are the young lovers? Where have all the street musicians gone? 
 
But this town is not silent. I can hear thunder that grizzles, gripes, sneers, hangs around; muttering, grumbling, ready to kick back. Perhaps somewhere in there a wooden shutter is rattling as it battles to free itself from rusted, loosening hinges. Perhaps I can hear a murder of crows screeching and scratching around overblown bean stalks; picking their way through cabbage patches abandoned in hidden back yards. Did I hear a train guard’s whistle?  Perhaps I sense another storm circling, growling, stirring as it waits for forked lightning to strike.
 
Two figures, both elderly, both women, both alone, stand, wait. What are they waiting for? Perhaps, once, they were friends or at least neighbours on nodding terms. Perhaps they are hoping that the other will speak? Or perhaps they no longer recognise each other. Or is it that they prefer to be as strangers? Perhaps it is easier that way. 
 
The old woman who is staring straight at me looks haunted. Her face is blank. She clutches her umbrella awkwardly, defiantly, painfully in her hand. Rainwater trickles and streams downhill. To her failing eyes, the ground is rippling: wet grass, slippy rivulets, mud, fresh blown leaves. Earth sticks to the tips of her shoes. The ground squelches beneath her; this way and that. I want to tell her that she must be wary when she stumbles uphill: this is the time to watch her step. 
 
She has obviously just been passed by a woman of some importance. I imagine this smart lady marching down the path: left, right, trippety-trot in her well-heeled, bespoke, leather boots spat on frequently and polished by a retinue of poorly paid minions. Note the cut of her pure wool coat, that fox fur trim with matching hat. Make way! She has a husband, a brother and a grown-up son, all with friends in very high places. Stand aside! 
 
So, the world stands aside, lets her pass but just for a moment she pauses; hesitates.
 
And she is captured. Near the fence. With an old woman who looks like Death. 
 
Dorothy Burrows
​
Based in the United Kingdom, Dorothy Burrows enjoys writing poetry, flash fiction and short plays. This year, her  work has appeared in various journals including The Ekphrastic Review, Spelt Magazine, The Alchemy Spoon, Failed Haiku and is forthcoming in Dust Poetry Magazine. She tweets @rambling_dot

**

Passing

It was before and then it was after.  The ground was reflected in the monochromatic sky, rising in the disappearing drizzle, held momentarily by the scattered light.  The canopy could not be breached, not even by the unveiling here and now.

The witnesses waited--still, fixed, pretending not to see.  Their refusals collided with the odd blankness of the landscape, falling like invisible waves on shores of disintegration.  Although tangible, they remained impalpable, unfinished, holding on to each other with an enduring rebuke, their masklike countenances of habit and resentment stripping away their flesh until only bones remained underneath their heavy garments.

Does any destination survive?  All the houses lie flattened against the mirror of dusk, silent and unwelcoming.  The trees drift into painted lines, offering neither landmark nor shelter as they merge with the fragments of cloud and sky.

Against the shifting ground, all directions become unmoored, lost, unnavigable.  Whispers take the shapes of crows, superimposed on nothing but the mercurial trajectory of the always-impending tempest, summoned from a contingency that is always beyond the grasp of the between.

Kerfe Roig

Kerfe Roig lives in NYC.  You can find more of her art and writing at https://kblog.blog/ and on the blog she does with her friend Nina https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/ .

**

Woman Navigating a Path
 
This is what war does.
It returns in the haunting
leaving remnants of death
in its wake        hanging
in the drape of pain
like the purple cloth she clings to.
 
She hobbles the puddled pathway
and I catch a glimpse of her face.
She is wearing his scars.
I see it in her sunken eyes, 
in her chiselled jawbone,
in the fist that clutches rage.
 
The sky is walking the same path.
Its cheeks share the blotchy stains
left by the aftermath of rain.
She inhales the breath of decay
as she glides through her grief,
to the churchyard gate
 
as soundless as a shadow.

Kate Young

Kate Young lives in England and has been passionate about poetry since childhood. She generally writes free verse and loves responding to Art through Ekphrastic poems. Her poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Nitrogen House, Words for the Wild, Poetry on the Lake, Alchemy Spoon and a Scottish Writers Centre chapbook. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlet A Spark in the Darkness recently won The Baker’s Dozen competition with Hedgehog Press and is due to be published. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet.

**

​We Avoid

murky puddles, our faces indistinct.
Horizon slants of rain brush stroke downward
onto factory chimneys, purple brink
of fields, as we pass storm broken fence wood.

I carry a plank of wood beneath my coat.
Curious sideways glances from strangers 
as if I, a woman shouldn't , but a bloke
should repair my home opened to dangers.

I will not be constrained by any rough edged weather, 
that batters my roof, shakes the glass
in my windows. I will walk this psalm drenched
path, knowing all in mind will come to pass.

After the storm the storm still blasts elsewhere,
and will again to us, so we prepare.

Paul Brookes

Paul Brookes is a shop asst. His chapbooks include, She Needs That Edge (Nixes Mate Press, 2017 2018) The Spermbot Blues (OpPRESS, 2017), Please Take Change (Cyberwit.net, 2018), As Folk Over Yonder ( Afterworld Books, 2019). He edits The Wombwell Rainbow Interviews and is a contributing writer of Literati Magazine. He recently had work broadcast on BBC Radio 3 The Verb.

**

Pearls of Wisdom

The church doors are closing; it’s time to reflect 
on the week gone by. An old lady hunches aside 
for others close by who wish to say—hi.
Speak the obvious…damn chilly outside. 
You should get-off-home m'dear; that old-
man and dog of yours will be all but done for
-alone wanting its leg of mutton the dog,
his butcher’s bone. What a sermon that was, eh?
Wasn’t-worth half a farthing of anybody’s money 
m'dear, never mine or my  bus fare, I tell you?
I’m of a mind not to come again next week.
These moss green gravestones are deadly to walk, 
look, watch how you go m'dear and-
give my love to your poor old Sis, 
tell her I’m thinking of her she’s in my prayers.
It’s a shame she had to fall-down-those ghastly cellar stairs.
Shouldn’t have to do it…at her age…I told her,
I told her…she should have gone electric.
She should have gone to NORWEB Chuck.
But would she listen, would she listen,
I’ve been telling her for years those days of
-filling a coal scuttle is long since gone.
Just thinking about it, now Chuck gives me chilblains
it absolutely fills my heart with tears, not pearls of wisdom.

Mark Andrew Heathcote

Mark Andrew Heathcote is adult learning difficulties support worker, his poetry has been published in many journals, magazines and anthologies, he resides in the UK, from Manchester, Mark is the author of “In Perpetuity” and “Back on Earth” two books of poems published by a CTU publishing group, Creative Talents Unleashed.

**

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​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 Hylas and the Nymphs, by John William Waterhouse. Deadline is May 28, 2021 .

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

The Rules

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

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

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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.

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

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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!

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

The Bird Watching contest finalists in flash fiction and poetry have been selected.

See the flash fiction finalists here.

ora et labora

toil and spin
we begin
wool, stone
cloth and bone
fibers break
fingers ache
scarlet thread
daily bread
sisters bend
knots end
warp and weft
right, left
kneel and weep
till and keep
 
the slanted ladder forms a stair
work is prayer

​Kelly Scott Franklin

Kelly Scott Franklin teaches literature at Hillsdale College. His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Commonweal, Driftwood, Thimble Literary Magazine, Iowa City Poetry in Public, and elsewhere.

​ 
Gifts From Pachamama
                       
                                               "When the doors of the storehouse opened,
                                                 Clouds flew out like birds..."
                                                                               Ecclesiastes

     How must it feel    to be so high in the Andes
     that the sky touches the horizon    with mountain tops

     in the background?     The women who are making textiles
     seem to be unchanged     by the 20th century, dedicated
 
      to recreating the patterns of the Incas     the herring-bone
      in red and gold.    And though the women's lips don't move

      in Alvarado's painting --    are immobile,  part of a formidable
      silence at high altitudes      do they pray, in quietude,

       to the inner earth, and to the outer earth     blessing
       their materials and their craft;     and to the sun, the moon,

        the wind, the lightning, and the rain;    for the rain god
        to delay his gift of precipitation     if winter ((May to September)

        fattens the clouds by mistake    during the dry season --
        so it won't rain, and the textile workers      can continue

        their work outside, in natural light     weaving threads
        in madder yellow     and the earthy-ochre of a thick

         zig-zagging pathway.  One woman in the painting
         has climbed down a ladder      from the storehouse

         where ritual elements --     hummingbird feathers
         and sequins like the shining lake --    are saved

         in small baskets     until the month when they're added
         to the textiles as sacred decoration      for a fire offering;

         strands woven to be burned     to honor the sun god --
         a culture hero --     during ceremonies to Pachamama --

          Mother Earth....     The woman who climbed down the ladder
          was wearing a hat     with a wide-brim that acknowledges authority,

          and power --     the hat covering her head contained thoughts:
          if you change your hat     you must change your mind,

          an old woman reading coca leaves told her     describing a future
          where she would travel down the mountain     to the fenced-in pens

         filled with guinea pigs     where there was a caretaker who --
         it was said -- could make miracles;     would choose and weigh

         two healthy guinea pigs.     Do not roast them --  he would caution her --
         even if you are very hungry.    They are the day god's magic totems.

         You must put one of them     in each of the hands of your small son
         so he can feel how their fur is soft --     softer than coarse black hair --

         how their hearts beat in their bodies --     faster 
         than his own heart's comforting thump.     Everything you do,

         down the mountain     must please the gods of night and day
         who have argued     so the night god has made your boy blind;

          but the god of daylight     who speaks with the wisdom
          of Pachamama     sees all colors in darkness, in the beautiful,

          black, unseeing eyes of the boy     who she promises will feel color
          when his fingertips recognize the power of animals    as he touches

          the guinea pigs --  1 and 2....     So it was that the boy's mother
          went back to work      and took off her wide-brimmed hat.

           She set it down, carefully     behind her on the rough ground
           of the courtyard in the painting     and picked up the herring-bone

           textile, touching each diamond and chevron     like it was a magic
           stone, one of Pachamama's amulets --     measuring its length,

           its sturdiness and its strength --      woven long
           enough so she can dress her child     in handmade cloth

           and wrap-him-round in herring-bone;     so she can carry
           him like a part of her --  a cocoon --     secure against her body

           for his first trip, her lips near his ears     as she whispers
           the size and shape of everything she sees     using words for color;

           this, the miracle man, the day god     and the fortune reader
           promise is the Pachamama's gift --
                                                                          nature's way of giving second sight.

               Laurie Newendorp
           

Laurie Newendorp once tried to take her children to Macchu Picchu to see Haley's Comet, coming for a second time in Hirohito's lifetime, but the trip was economically impossible, and she lost a large deposit to the Natural Science Museum. The atmosphere and high altitude of the Andes must be mystical, and although the herring-bone of the textile being made by the Peruvian women in Alvarado's painting is an "everyday" pattern, different from the bright designs in festival fabrics, the mystery of the Incas, and the voices of their nature gods, surely whisper where mothers weave long "belts" to wrap around their babies to secure the child's position when being carried.

​**

Too Late to Pray 
 
It’s too late to pray 
so we sift through  
the fabric and weave  
of our ancestry 
trying to forge a 
new history 
where we have 
meaning and a name  
where we’re not  
slurs or shell casings 
where the same rain 
that falls on your head 
lands just the same on ours 
no more sprayed bullets  
or crimson on the corner 
no more sons  
and daughters 
dying in vain while  
each momma  
screams and wails  
screams and wails  
screams and wails 
screams and wails  
as one bloody day  
bleeds into  
the very next

Len Kuntz

Len Kuntz is a writer from Washington State and the author of four books, most recently the story collection, THIS IS WHY I NEED YOU, out now from Ravenna Press.  You can find more of his writing at http://lenkuntz.blogspot.com 

**

​Shadows in La Plaza 

Three sisters in the afternoon sun
intricate lines on lines
diamonds in their hands
shoulders lean
backs ache
but the work goes on
each weaving
her own message
as the pattern stretches
across the hot sand
the sun passes over the work
a knife.
Three shadows cross my soul
bending, bowing over the work
strong faces, hands
the fingerweaving passes
silent among them. 
Three fates 
as dusk nears
the weaving crosses
the silent plaza
but eyes watch from the shadows
eyes wait.
The one who had begun
lets the threads slip
from bent fingers
the one who had continued
holds knowingly
story is all
the one who must
cut the thread
slight sobbing in the air
always
the story must end.
​
Carol Lee Saffioti-Hughes

Carol Lee Saffioti-Hughes is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside;  trekker of wild things in the north woods, former librarian in a log cabin library.  In addition to academic publications, she has published poetry in Canada, England, the United States and China.  Chapbook: The Lost Italian and the Sound of Words, Brighter Path Publishers, and numerous poems in zines and anthologies.

**

to make a ladder 

we must weave what is between the rungs with fingers we have not always had 
here in this world where silence is larger than the steps between, and so we begin 
as children, choosing words like stitches, placing them on our tongues, behind 
our lips before we pierce the air with them, pierce the world with them as we do 
the cloth we weave, one hand holding for the other, one finger kissing another, 
the needle sharp as a tongue can be, a tongue we know, a tongue we do not yet 
know, both wrestling words into angles and stripes that can sear or save us, yes 
save us too as they are stitched into our ears, our cloth, stitch by stitch, to leave 
a long line of words dripped or stripped from our lips, our tongues, to be stitched 
again to suit or wound around our necks, to show what steps we make between 
red and no, between a hat and the blue sky of winter in the story of we, of me, 
of who I am, I am.  

Mary Hutchins Harris

Mary Hutchins Harris is a poet and essayist. Her work has appeared in Tar River Poetry, Kakalak, Antietam Review, Main Street Rag, Poemeleon, The Ekphrastic Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Spillway, Seeking: Poetry and Prose inspired by Jonathan Green, and Feminine Rising: Voice of Power and Invisibility, as well as in other print and on-line publications. She is an Interdisciplinary Studies Adjunct professor in the Lesley University, Cambridge, MA Low-Residency MFA program and on the faculty of the YMCA Downtown Writer's Center in Syracuse, NY .

**

The Homecoming

Our dead husband Amuru will return tonight. Five months of mourning, tonight we will celebrate. Drum beats will resound, rocks ring with ancient chants. November, the month of the dead. The young men will carry their Kuraka, head of the clan, shoulder high. I, Chasca, his youngest wife, will drape his mummified body with the scarf. 

My fingers travel over the fabric, baby alpaca and vicuna fleece, cool and soft as the cloud forests.  Smooth burnished orange shimmering with gold thread inlay, old marks honouring the sun god Inti. The underside is a mirror image, but embroidered with the protecting eye. ​

Pisco and Atoc work to my left, heads bowed. Atoc scans the material for imperfections, silent as the fox for which she was named. Pisco sings as she works, lullabies for the babies she never birthed. We have prepared cakes of maize and lamb's blood, shaped and cooked in the fire pit at sunrise. We cried for Amuru when the sky glowed crimson, and moon dipped to the dawn. We will cry no more.

I feel the flutter, butterfly wings beating, deep inside. I move my hand to rest on the curve of my belly, and smile. The priest, from The Sacred Valley has foreseen a boy to take his father’s place. He has seen in the fire that he will lead the new rebellion. A black condor waits, watching, black against terracota, priestly collar radiating white. My fingers grope for the strip of leather round my neck. It holds the silver crucifix, brand of the conqueror. Tearing it from my throat, I throw it to the dust and spit.

Tonight the purple chica will stain our lips, the flames flitter and lick, and shadows spin in air drunk with balsam spice. Dancing, chanting, cadence climbing, life and death will combine, creeping from the earth to the High-Priest’s ray-splayed disc.

Crouched on the cliff the condor waits, ready to swoop and feast on the carrion. 

Margaret Timoney

Margaret Timoney writes from Donegal, on the North West coast of Ireland.

**

Braided Bonds

It was another monotonous day.
The trio sat side by side,
Working in silence,
For their hearts could read
Each other’s thoughts.

The sturdy thread in their hands
Preserved each unspoken word:
Apathy, sincerity, and loyalty…
Meticulously woven into the fabric,
Disguised as creative patterns.

Their devotion to their craft
Muffled any questions and
Stifled any curiosities
That a different life was
Within their grasp.

Erika Bodden

Erika Bodden is of Colombian and Peruvian descent,  grew up in Pittsburgh, and currently lives in Tampa, Florida. Consequently, she is a loyal Steelers fan for life, but also a Bucs fan! In addition to writing, her hobbies include activities associated with nature, music, art, and fitness. My must-haves in life include: sunshine, coffee, dogs, music, and Star Trek.

**

Tapestry

They wanted the work to illustrate their lives,
the rich tapestry of the lives they lived.
They chose the colours carefully
sometimes rich and vibrant,
sometimes dark
just like life.
They wove them into zig zag patterns
up and down,
up and down.
They thought it seemed true,
true to life.
They wove the cloth longer
longer and longer
used all the warp
and reached the end.
It seemed true,
true to life.

Lynn White

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Vagabond Press, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes Journal. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com///www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/

**

Church
 
Faces rapt and inward, 
their long band of cloth 
lies obedient in hand 
after hand, then loops 
over an arm, as a trinity 
of women adore.
Two are on their knees in 
a liturgy of weavers’ 
worship.  One presides, 
luminous and absorbed, 
chief celebrant of their 
ritual by which design 
is divined through laced 
thread and play of color: 
holy light and eye’s power 
blend tones and surprise, 
but the women, silent –   
revere not by word but by 
finger-tip and thumb:
they see the beautiful 
with their fingers. 
What have they made?  
Perhaps, trim 
for chieftain’s cape, sash 
for queen’s tunic, stole 
for a priest’s vestment.
We are not told. 
Their hands enfold 
the sacred.  That is 
enough to know.

Johanna Caton

​Johanna Caton, O.S.B., is a Benedictine nun and lives in England: she is an American and lived in the U.S. until adulthood, when her monastic vocation took her to the U. K.  Her poems have appeared in The Christian Century, The Windhover Literary Journal, The Green Hills Literary Lantern, on The Catholic Poetry Room webpage at www.integratedcatholiclife.org, and in other venues, both online and print.  

**

Dream Weavers 

I climb the ladder to my roof and watch my mother and her sisters weave together the dreams of the village. They work quietly in the dry heat, their fingers stained with red clay. In the mornings they take turns braiding each other’s hair before the sun comes up. Three strands to make a bond that will last until dusk. What else can they do but create. Their fingers, like hips, send forth a unique design that will ripple through time and space. For the small boy next door, whose smile is a flash of light behind his dirt-streaked face, they build him a well with clean water. Better yet, a boat that could take him north, to the rich mountains, or up into the clouds. Whichever he prefers. For his mother, whose ankle has swelled to the size of her knee, who leans heavily on a stick carved from the Cinchona tree, a throne fit for a queen. A doctor to perform the simple operation that would stop her senseless pain.  

​I ask my mother what she wants but she says nothing. She is the weaver. She can only give. She is the heart, her sisters are the brain and the stomach. They are one person. They need only the air to summon their stitch. To carry the prayers of the night whisperers to their rooms so that they wake with heads full of colour. This band, this red cloth covered in diamonds, this is their spine, the backbone that holds them together. If one sister pricks her finger on the fibers, they all bleed. Like the elements, they can’t exist without each other. They are earth, and air, and water. I’m thirteen. My fingers are starting to itch. I feel the flames dance in my chest and move my body into patterns. I braid my hair like theirs, take the basket of fabrics into the house every evening. 
 
I watch them from the window. Brown hair flowing in waves under the moonlight. I hear the water splashing, see it flying through the air between them. Their laughter echoes far beyond the village, and into the night.

Kerri Vasilakos​

Kerri Vasilakos is a writer from Long Island, New York who is currently living in Georgia. She earned her BA in English- Creative Writing at Southern New Hampshire University and has had her poems featured in their Creative Writing Clubs Newsletters. Kerri also owns a spiritual counseling business with her fiancé that focuses on holistic healing and energy work. She has a deep faith, and a passion for guiding others along their healing journey. Kerri is also a gifted artist and a cat lover. Her poems have been featured in the Penman Review.

**

Stitch by Stitch   

With heavy eyelids, concentrating, slow,
they scrutinise the cloth to check each thread   
from altar runner, blanket, quilt and bedspread
to clothes for all from chullo cap to toe.
Too much the same? Too many knots and rows? 
Their hands grow numb, but backache’s what they dread,
they crouch and kneel, collapse and sometimes stop dead,
but pick up and continue with the sew. 
It’s hour by hour – enough to focus on,    
like how they built their houses brick by brick
or how they twist and fasten thin black plaits – 
one day they’ll wonder where their time has gone.
With tired eyes and necks which start to crick, 
they stitch and count, ascend and leave such tracks.

Helen Freeman

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

**

Woven
 
Her first belt. Before daylight fades and clouds slap the mountainside, three women roll out the delicate cloth, hold it firmly over their gnarled fingers, sense its fragility. Section by section, they examine the quality of its pattern, colour, weave, tension; feel the fine alpaca wool. They remember Maria’s little-girl, sing-song voice counting, laughing, teasing, memorising sequences; they imagine that they are helping her once more to master the knack of threading. In a whisper, they discuss who taught her this design. Grandmother, aunt or mother? All lay claim. All played a part, as did every woman in the village: women and girls together; tending the flock; weaving, spinning, singing, playing, sharing and passing on their stories as they crafted, creating their world.  That’s how they had all learnt. Though none could match the skill of Maria; from her hands, the next generation were beginning to learn… 
 
Years wind back and forth as three women squat and kneel, stretch out on cobbles, ignoring pain; hard as their mountain’s rock, they labour on, eyes downcast; minds, hands, bodies fixed on this task. 
 
Dusk falls. A glowering sky; thunder snarls; a distant flash. Breezes whip away old women’s breath, catch their ankles, make the wooden ladder judder, stir up a blur of ground dust.
 
Time: they roll up her belt, carry it inside; ceremoniously unwinding it, they return it to its maker….
 
lightening -
in a flower-filled room
her corpse.
 
Dorothy Burrows

Based in the United Kingdom, Dorothy Burrows enjoys writing flash fiction, poetry and short plays. This year, her poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Spelt Magazine, The Alchemy Spoon, The Poetry Pea Journal, Prune Juice, Failed Haiku and The Wales Haiku Journal. She tweets: @rambling_dot

**

Les Souvenirs of Krishan Nagar/Sant Nagar
 
for my Mother, Mona & my Maternal Aunties, Robina and Samina
 
after Women Making Textiles by Mario Urteaga Alvarado (Peru), 1939 C.E.
 
 
Prosperity that the golden muses gave me was no delusion:
dead, I won’t be forgotten.
— Sappho[1]
 
 
I.                Summoning the Muse
 
       It was time for the due dosage of inspiration for me; hence, The Girls in the respective painting sat exposed on my laptop’s monitor. Whilst I was preoccupied by the thoughts of crafting a poetic- narrative on their activities, The Trio had also managed to engage Mona’s glance, who was merely passing through the dining room en route to the kitchen to mind her housewifery duties and chores. Is it a painting of/from Krishan Nagar/Sant Nagar? – she couldn’t help becoming captivated, they look like Indian Girls from old, old times, are they? … What are they making?
 
II.              Nota bene
 
       This narration is more a transcription of Mona’s memories than anything else really, and also a tribute to the hardships endured by my parents & their parents & their parents, which have subsequently made it possible for me to sit-on-my-bum rather extremely-comfortably now—id est without a worry in the world—so that I could also indulge in the luxuries of crafting this discourse.
 
III.            ! وہ بھی کیا زمانہ تھا؛ وہ بھی کیا وقت تھا  / Those were strange, strange times!
 
! وہ بھی کیا زمانہ تھا؛ وہ بھی کیا وقت تھا
(those were strange, strange times!),
the avalanche of memories is set in motion:
10 children, your Nana & Nani gave birth to /[2]
one of them, boy, was lost to Polio in his infancy /
he had golden brown hair and blue eyes /
my Dada & Dadi had to unwillingly migrate
from Shimla in Himalayas to Lahore, Punjab –
long before the partition of the Subcontinent India in 1947 CE /[3]
but our great-great grandparents – Eisa Khan & Musa Khan –
had migrated from the Central Asia to Hindustan
and served in The Great Mughal Turk Empire
as Vazirs (Ministers) during the late 18th century CE /
! وہ بھی کیا زمانہ تھا؛ وہ بھی کیا وقت تھا
(those were strange, strange times!) /
… /
back then, Krishan Nagar & Sant Nagar were founded
as the Modern Model Towns during the British Raj –
a ‘Safe Heaven’ for elites, apparently /
and that’s where my grandparents had decided to settle in Lavapuri /[4]
but the towns also saw the worst cases of massacres
during the 1947 migrations between Baharat and newly born Pakistan –
my Dadi used to share horrifying stories
of murders, rapes, kidnappings and lootings
of the Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs alike /
! وہ بھی کیا زمانہ تھا؛ وہ بھی کیا وقت تھا
(those were strange, strange times!) /
… /
your Nani had taught me & your Khalas[5]
how to sew with needles: we weren’t so financially affluent,
so had to sew our own clothes using the empty flour-sacks;
the thought of buying ready-made clothes
didn’t exist even in our wildest imaginations /
I had received a first proper gift in my life
in the shape of a Singer’s sewing machine
from your Nana – a wedding gift /
it’s 42+ years old now and is still functional –
I am currently using it to sew a new Kurta-Shalwar[6]
for your father for the upcoming Eid /
your father only lived in the neighbouring borough – Sant Nagar /
initially, i got introduced to him through his younger sister –
we used to attend the same college /
and then, your Nana had become rather fond of him –
since he was a Captain in the military and all /
yes, it was an arranged marriage /
there was a marriage proposal from a business family in the USA, as well,
but your Nana wasn’t too comfortable with the idea
of giving his favourite daughter’s hand to some stranger a million miles away /
we couldn’t even imagine playing with boys in the streets,
let alone falling in love with someone from the neighbourhood
or outside of the borough and getting married to him /
you’ve taken after your Nana –
he used to love books and reading and writing, too /
! وہ بھی کیا زمانہ تھا؛ وہ بھی کیا وقت تھا 
(those were strange, strange times!) /
… /
we had a similar looking ladder at our house –
like this one in this painting /
it was made of bamboo – we preferred to use it
to climb to the roof-top
to play ludo or marbles or cards, us sisters /
the staircase was made of mud-bricks
and wasn’t really safe to use –
after every monsoon, if needed a complete renovation /
the roof-top at our house used to especially come to life
during the annual Vasanta Kite Flying Season –
your Mamus[7] even used to come back home
from Germany and Australia and Dubai to attend it /
! وہ بھی کیا زمانہ تھا؛ وہ بھی کیا وقت تھا
(those were strange, strange times!) /
 
To Be Continued …
 
Saad Ali
 
Saad Ali (b. 1980 C.E. in Okara, Pakistan) has been educated and brought up in the UK and Pakistan. He holds a BSc and an MSc in Management from the University of Leicester, UK. He is an existential philosopher-poet and translator. Ali has authored four books of poetry. His new collection of poetry is called Prose Poems: Βιβλίο Άλφα(AuthorHouse, 2020). He is a regular contributor to The Ekphrastic Review. By profession, he is a Lecturer, Consultant, and Trainer/Mentor. Some of his influences include: Vyasa, Homer, Ovid, Attar, Rumi, Nietzsche, and Tagore. He is fond of the Persian, Chinese, and Greek cuisines. He likes learning different languages, travelling by train, and exploring cities on foot. To learn more about his work, please visit www.saadalipoetry.com.

**

Subversive Textiles
 
It’s not only poetry that can get you arrested,
or producing pamphlets against the occupational forces,
it’s weaving your traditional weave.
 
At least that’s what we take away from Peruvian history.
The Spanish, resenting the competition 
for their artisans from home, sought to stamp out
the production by traditional Peruvian artisans
who used vicuña, alpaca… even metallic threads and silk.
 
Peru’s tradition of textile production predates pottery.
10,000 years of the backstrap loom and other techniques 
handed down from generation to generation. 
There were complex embroideries and tapestries with deities
and monsters; influences of their abstracts can even be gleaned
in the Bauhaus school and other 20th century art.

In their weaves, the Inka honoured their ancestors and
Pachamama—the earth mother— as well as the heavens:
the sun, the moon, the stars.
If I were a Quechua maiden, the women of my village
would gift me the result of months of weaving at my wedding.
 
Today you can buy the most intricate patterns, the most vibrant
colours, the most sensual cloths in the markets
of which there are plenty.
The women of Peru remembered.

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 fourth poetry collection, THE RAIN GIRL, was published by Chaffinch Press in 2020. Want to find out more? https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/

**

1. Warp

 
At the excavation of black mud
Out upon the tidal flats
A sour smell of marsh sulfur
Permeates the air
As shovels push down
Through several seasons of silt
And deep within the sodden banks,
Milt deposited from upland slopes,
The black blood of mountain streams
Bled south to harbor’s tongue,
They’re upon the earthen throat,
 
A box is drawn out.
 
Hands fall from the sharpened spades
Knees push against
The swallowing mud,
And a fumbling of hands wrenches off
A latch,
Throwing arched beads of mud
Like black pearls
Against the digger’s faces
That peer in speckled fancy
Beneath mud-swept brows;
 
The box is empty.

1. Woof

 
A wormhole looms,
Perambulates upon the tidal flats,
As the sweet fragrance of marshmallow
Glistens in the hot throat of August
And a Singularity pierces the ground
And drives on through to the planet’s core
Where lost within the molten mantle,
Milt from the upland slope,
A raw absence of space and time
Diffuses in forces unseen till now,
There enwombed
Within the planet’s arching belly;
 
A loom is inverted.
 
3. Weave
 
Hands rotate upon the tapered spokes
As knees grip against the enclosing center
And across the feet of all living creatures
A latch is wrenched off
And a cover thrown back
To reveal the mud-splattered faces
Peering down
Into the gulping lips of time,
As Penelope’s blackened fingers
Pull warp from woof 
Deceiving and awaiting
Her husband’s return;
 
The box is filled with wool.

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