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Ekphrastic Writing Challenge: Artist Jennifer Angus, with Guest Editor Kate Copeland

5/26/2023

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Picture
Installation view from The Grasshopper and the Ant, and Other Stories, by Jennifer Angus (USA) contemporary. With thanks for images courtesy of the artist.
Picture

The Ekphrastic Review is thrilled to have longtime TER contributor Kate Copeland join us again as a guest judge and curator for the current challenge. Thank you so much to Kate for sharing her time and talent with us, and for choosing this intriguing art to inspire us! 

**

Dear Ekphrastic Challengees,

Here is your new Ekphrastic challenge…and I do expect (and hope and dream!) it to be an exciting and original one for you! 

Jennifer Angus creates diverse and innovative artwork and the piece you will write to, is one from her exhibition named The Grasshopper and the Ant…and Other Stories. Note that the insects she is working with, are real and showing their natural colour, although they are dead and dried. Check Jennifer’s webpage to read more about her ethics re working with insects, and if you are as taken with her art as I am, do have a look at the earlier work (for example the Fragile Earth-exhibition at the Florence Griswold Museum a.o.) : https://www.jenniferangus.com/index.html). 

Thank you all for sending in your ekphrastic pieces!

Thank you Lorette for the opportunity to be a challenge-editor for the TER, I feel very honoured, again.
 
Enjoy, Kate Copeland

**

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

The prompt this time is an installation from The Grasshopper and the Ant, and Other Stories, by Jennifer Angus. Deadline is June 9, 2023.

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

The Rules

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

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

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

Voluntary gift of $5 CAD with submission.

YES

​​​4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.

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

5.Include ANGUS 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 9, 2023.

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

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

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

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

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

16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.
Picture
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Gustave Courbet: Ekphrastic Responses

5/19/2023

0 Comments

 
Picture
La Grotte de la Loue, by Gustave Courbet (France) 1864

Dear Ekphrastic Writers and Readers;

It was a great honour to receive and read all of the poems and fiction written for the Courbet Challenge. I have been enamoured of ekphrastic writing for several years and love the prompts presented from paintings and sculpture. Such a rich pool of poetic fodder! I find it fascinating how different the interpretations can be on a single specimen of art. Such talented writers! I have narrowed the entries down to this collection, for their special qualities and unique approaches. I would like to thank Lorette C. Luzajic, editor of The Ekphrastic Review for the opportunity to be a guest editor, and for her continuing efforts in curating such an interesting and exciting poetry journal.

Warm Regards,
Julie A. Dickson


**

Cave Painting

I was not accustomed to dark
I made my eye into a pencil
piercing into the lead
I saw bent figures
among the stalagmites
their voices calling through evolution
my brothers and sisters
I reached into the hole
to pick them out
but my fingers were not enough
paint they said
paint the past
our imaginations are wild horses
on empty plains
paint the future
I told them
we are waiting for you.

Marc Brimble

Marc Brimble lives in Spain and teaches English. When he's not doing this, he likes drinking tea and looking at the sky.

**


La Grotte de la Loue

What do you see, Gustave,
as you peer into the depths?
Do you perceive a flicker
the glimmer of light moving there
a hint of rippling reflected on walls
or do you stare farther down and in
looking beyond what is visible
into the dark abyss, not just here
but the inner world of yourself,
contemplating deeper within
mining your personal hinterland
busy with white noise and black light
allowing your own mind's colours
to flood your soul and the canvas?

Emily Tee

Emily Tee writes poetry and flash fiction.  She's had pieces published in The Ekphrastic Review and for its challenges, and elsewhere online, and in print in some publications by Dreich, in Poetry Scotland and in several poetry anthologies. She lives in the UK.

**

The Roar of the Waterfall

A cascade, leaping from rock to rock, a waterfall broken by a thousand imponderables, a spectacle stirring emotions, touching all the senses. The Loue springs from a dark cave dug into the rocks during millions of years by its relentless intent. Courbet painted it 14 times, investigating the secrets of its terrible beauty.

Perhaps he was in thrall to the Vouivre, the dragon that resides in the cave. Half woman, half snake, her forehead is adorned with an enormous precious stone which she hides on the shore, in the moss, or under a stone, before drinking or bathing. Thief, try your luck, but don’t get caught. Her revenge will be terrible...

Beauty’s mystery
Source of nature’s power
Woman

Rose Mary Boehm

Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as seven poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was twice nominated for a Pushcart. Her latest: Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders? (Kelsay Books July 2022), Whistling in the Dark (Cyberwit July 2022), and Saudade (December 2022) are available on Amazon. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/

**

The Stream That Is You

I draw down     into the cave 
of my heart          into the dark 
welcoming world        of water and rock

of soft memories       hard knowledge 
of knowing         this long    hallowed channel 
of want     regret       and quiet repose

I find my reflection     where riffles 
toss to the edge      travel slow currents 
of yearning       slip into sorrow 

murmur of love 
you are a moment      long 
in its lingering      you are forever

flow silent within me
meander      arrive in each corner 
each crevice        you….

Ursula Shepherd

Ursula Shepherd has spent a lifetime exploring the world, celebrating all those alien life forms (plants, animals, even algae and bacteria) found right here on planet Earth, and finding joy in the beauty and power of words. She has written a book Nature Notes: A Companion to the Seasons, published by Fulcrum, occasional essays, and has poems in Unbroken, Grim and Gilded, Minnow and upcoming in Writing in a Woman’s Voice.

**

Dark Dreaming

She’d always loved to watch the birds
as they swooped and swerved
in the sky above her.
She could see them now
from the mouth of the cave,
black birds,
rooks or ravens,
corvids as dark as the cave.

They were invisible as she went deeper
so she could only see them
when she dreamt.

And she wondered 
if  dreams would be enough
to sustain her
in the dark.

She wondered 
if they would be enough for her
when the black water rose.
and the river flowed in.

Lynn White

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

**

boatman

I harken to the lapping
of the water against
the rocks
the boat
the pole
where I hear
in the voice of the cliff
all the whispered echoes
of bygone lemures
lamenting
weeping
pleading
as if I’m some Orpheus
come to bring them out
back into the world above
instead of the boatman
completing
a journey
allotted
to other days
and nights
erased
and faded
like fingerprints
in the clay of our lives
shaped
fired
glazed
then broken
then cast out
onto the sand
lining the beaches
where the young
are still
standing
-- waiting

Mark A. Fisher

Mark A. Fisher is a writer, poet, and playwright living in Tehachapi, CA.  His poetry has appeared in: Reliquiae, Silver Blade, Eccentric Orbits, and many other places. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for his poem “papyrus” in 2016. His first chapbook, drifter, is available from Amazon. His poem “there are fossils” (originally published in Silver Blade) came in second in the 2020 Dwarf Stars Speculative Poetry Competition. His plays have appeared on California stages in Pine Mountain Club, Tehachapi, Bakersfield, and Hayward. He has also won cooking ribbons at the Kern County Fair.

**

Trapped by a Nervous Dawn

Trapped by a nervous dawn
the dead stone of the night knocks at the buried sky
gone underground,
retreated dramatically.
Shadows applaud its growing momentum
and awkward passage.
 
The rocks add burden
while generously avoiding breaking:
think of a long, inflexible, rough rope -
and pull.
It hangs in the center like a dark arm
and a scream,
blocking the view,
tilting the water,
and I lean upward to answer
that weary moan of poison.
 
I try to take two huge steps back
and forth,
and extend my elbows in front of the creature
to avoid it:
what a beautiful awakening I am.

Angelo 'NGE' Colella

Angelo 'NGE' Colella lives in Italy, where he writes poetry and prose in Italian and English, makes analog collages, asemic writings and DADA objects.

**

Perspective 
 
cavernous limestone 
I feel insignificant
among the massive 

Elaine Sorrentino
 
Elaine Sorrentino, communications director by day, poet by night, has been published in Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Ekphrastic Review, Writing in a Women’s Voice, Global Poemic, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Agape Review, Haiku Universe, Sparks of Calliope, Muddy River Poetry Review, Panoply, Etched Onyx Magazine, and at wildamorris.blogspot.com.  She was featured on a poetry podcast at Onyx Publications. 

**

Reflections on the Grotto of Loue, My Home

away from home.
Whatever I give it,
ripples back to me in echoes.
These pink-grey limestone rocks overhead
are the roof over my days.
I cannot but hug the darkness, within,
its chiaroscuro-depths, its everyday-familiarity.
The soft chant of the white waters, without,
are the whispers of hope and clarity.
Standing on the banks of movement,
this brown glassy calm
is what I observe,
when I try to read the waters
of life at the margins.
It is here that I fish
not just for food and survival.
It is here that I fish
for the meaning of that survival
with the sharp spear of stillness.

Preeth Ganapathy

Preeth Ganapathy is a software engineer turned civil servant from Bengaluru, India. Her works have been published in several magazines such as The Ekphrastic Review, Soul-Lit, The Sunlight Press, Atlas+Alice, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Mothers Always Write, Tiger Moth Review and elsewhere. Her microchaps A Single Moment and Purple have been published by Origami Poems Project. She is also a two-time winner of Wilda Morris's Poetry Challenge.

**

La Grotte de la Loue, 1864, Gustave Courbet
 
The artist with his pallet of gunmetal and sorrel and his cavern-sized
vision of the bateau as it slides among grey-brown boulders,
of a white shirt and the position of an arm upward toward whatever
light reflects, could he be thinking of entreaty or surrender or simply of painting
the Loue, a man in a skiff.
 
The peasant in the river, with his culottes rolled, gripping his pole
could he have his attention on more than his skiff, more than the dark
grotto ahead, the trout and greyling in the spume where
the river is born again and again.
 
The painter with his pallet, and his grey and brown notion,
the fisherman with his flat skiff and his empty belly, neither of them
have a promise of fish or inspiration, although they both have desire.
The painter waits on the bank with his inventions and oils.
The fisherman gazes into the gloom toward a stir in the water.
 
Never mind beseeching the cavern for a fish dinner, a finished painting.
Never mind praying to the cave. Never mind worshiping the river.
Never mind paying homage to the darkness.
There are no answered prayers in stones of the Loue.

Wendy Taylor Carlisle

Wendy Taylor Carlisle is the author of four books and five chapbooks and is the 2020 winner of the Phillip H. McMath Poetry Prize. A chapbook-length selection of her work appears in Wild Muse: Ozarks Nature Poetry, (Cornerpost Press, 2022) and a new edition of her book, Reading Berryman to the Dog, (Belle Point Press. 2023)  is out now. Find her work at www.wendytaylorcarlisle.com,

**

Fisherman
 
no stars…
his blunt spear jabs
at the river’s flow
 
a lone fish…
today’s rush of brightness
swallowed
 
night’s barrier…
his yawn
of emptiness
 
hollow…
the source of his world
murmuring
 
dankness…
in his ears echoes
of lost voices
 
his lament…
moss-draped shadows 
only he can see
 
a ghostly stream…
giant limestone rocks 
trickling hard tears
 
his slight figure…
a twisted stalagmite 
about to break

Dorothy Burrows

Based in the UK, Dorothy Burrows enjoys writing poems, short plays and flash fiction. Her poems have been published by various journals including The Ekphrastic Review. She is still enthralled by the sight of stalactites and stalagmites. 

**

Almost
 
too small to notice
the fisherman stands at the lip
of the cavern’s stony mouth
casting his line
into the swallowing dark.
The river rises
from the throat of the abyss
to sluice around his ankles
cold  and blind
as the eye of God.
Unlike night
with its salted stars
and moon that wanes
and returns 
regular as a slow pulse,
this is no innocent darkness
he stands against
but one so absolute
its creatures live  
like  fallen angels 
without hope 
or memory of light
 
Mary McCarthy
 
Mary McCarthy is a retired Registered Nurse who has always been a writer. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic World, edited by Lorette C. Luzajic, The Plague Papers, edited by Robbi Nester, and recent issues of Gyroscope, 3rd Wednesday, Caustic Frolic, the Blue Heron Review, and Verse Virtual. Her collection How to Become Invisible will come out from Kelsay early next year.

**

Let Me Show You
                         
the grandeur beyond this
domed dark grotto, 
says, Courbet by The Loue.
 
Your vision is the protector
and the predator,
says, Courbet.  Imagine––
 
the little man at its gate is me
stirring and spearing the light of
the dark, my fish.
 
Leave the rest to my paints and brushes 
to enliven the boulders’ might
bestowed on us by the maker.
 
Look at the hues of jade 
and ivory worn by water sculpted
by storms.  Remember–– the bouncy foam
 
only performs for the rocks wearing 
lacey skirts and wind stoles.
They were there long before we got here.
 
I am simply offering you a peek in
the cavern’s womb,
the way each day and night do
 
when you and I drift into dreams of
the intangible our sun brings to life, nonstop,
with its circadian strokes.
 
Varsha Saraiya-Shah

Author of VOICES, a poetry chapbook by Finishing Line Press, Varsha’s work appears in journals such as Borderlands, Cha, Convergence, Echoes of the Cordillera, The Ekphrastic Review, Mutabilis Press, Penguin Random House-A Global Anthology, Pippa Ran UK book-Converse: Contemporary English Poetry by Indians, Skylark Publications- UK, Soundings East, UT Press, etc. and has featured on Public Radio and a multi-language/century dance program: “Poetry in Motion.” Poetry lets her practice the art of living.
 
**

Cavern

Somewhere, the earth yawned.
Cracked a smile
a little too deep.
A mouth watering
for an anticipated meal,
it opened slowly,
dripping with the slow indulgence 
of sustained appetite.
The hunger grew,
whole rooms blossomed with calcite.
Stalactite fangs pronged from above,
stalagmite cavities shone in the hollow.
The maw was a wide swallow
in the ground of Earth-face,
eyes closed to the sunlight,
the inside seeping in unhurried time.

Diane Funston

Diane Funston lives in Marysville, California, in the Sacramento Valley. Diane has been published in various journals including California Quarterly, Synkronicity, San Diego Poetry Annual, Whirlwind, F(r)iction, Tule Review, and Lake Effect Magazine, among others.  She has been the Poet-in-Residence for Yuba-Sutter Arts and Culture for two years and ran a monthly Zoom event called “Poetry Square” featuring poets from all over. Diane has a brand-new chapbook, her first, entitled Over The Falls from Foothills Publishing. 

**

Natural History
 
                    Time goes slower in the sea
                    and faster in the mountains.
                    Physics has taken over
                    where poetry left off.

                    Lynn Davidson, “Pearls”
 
Gaze into the mouth of the cave.
Beneath that yawning chasm, there is no doubt that time
folds. No doubt that time        bends deep,
 
waves and curls like an echo, rippling
under earth
and ancient water.
 
The history of the world is not set in stone,
but it can be found there – if you know
how to look. Think
 
cartography, in four dimensions. Coordinate,
distance, direction, and
limestone. A colossus of karst and strata, bone included
 
like salt grains in a Jurassic river, currents deep
and crystalized. These horizons run rugged, all pink and blue and gray,
overflowing with coral, mollusk and ammonoid,
 
sponge and algae. A tapestry of deposition. Little pearls
show the seasoned observer
where hunger is formed – little fossils where the world begins
 
to grow teeth. Tide meets pulse,
and teaches blood to beat
its vital rhythm.
 
Forget Plato and his shadows. Outside of the cave,
people cleave themselves from the past
headfirst, carving away the years until all that’s left
 
are skeletons. Hollow husks. One can play with them
like marionettes, a caricature in historical dress – but the truth remains
buried under six feet of earth, dust,
 
and decay. Inside the cave, though, the limestone colossus
breathes. Benthic silence thrums
with energy. Everything that has ever lived
 
and will ever live
swims through the stone – the walls, the bedrock,
coming closer and closer to the surface
 
until the distance between your hand
and the depths of Hades
is weathered down
 
to less
than a millimeter
of skin.

Kimberly Hall

Kimberly Hall (she/her) is a queer and neuro-divergent poet and writer. She received her master's degree in behavioral science from the University of Houston-Clear Lake. Her poetry and prose can be found in online publications such as First Flight, Sappho's Torque, and Equinox, as well as in several ekphrastic poetry anthologies and an upcoming anthology from Mutabilis Press. She still gets the idiomatic butterflies whenever anyone mentions these things where she can hear them.

**

Crab Eaters

Our wandering mind slinks off
until your words layer thoughts
and feelings beneath our limestone
skin: therapy with a palette knife.

Today we summon night terrors
in a sunbeam---go spearfishing
for secrets---watch them scrape
and squirm going down the wet-
over-dry shadows of your throat.

Mariel Herbert

Mariel Herbert likes to write short ekphrastic poems, including haiku and senryu. Her most recent two were published in Failed Haiku. She can sometimes be found walking near the Pacific Ocean or online at marielherbert.wordpress.com.

​
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Ekphrastic Writing Challenge: John Bingley Garland

5/12/2023

0 Comments

 
Picture
Collage from The Blood Collages, by John Bingley Garland (England) 1850s

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

The prompt this time is a collage from The Blood Collages, by John Bingley Garland. Deadline is May 26, 2023.

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

The Rules

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

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

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

Voluntary gift of $5 CAD with submission.

Shop
​​4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.

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

5.Include GARLAND 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 26, 2023.

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

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

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

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

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

16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.
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donna e perkins: Ekphrastic Writing Responses

5/5/2023

1 Comment

 
Picture
Untitled, by donne e perkins (USA) 2020

 
Dear Writers,
 
What do the eyes see? How can their vision be expressed in words? What do we do when the artwork is “untitled,” and we have no indication of the artist’s intent?
 
These are challenges of ekphrastic poetry. And yet, that is the magic, the miracle of what can be created. Enjoy meandering through the labyrinth of in-depth reflections on
  • remaining untitled
  • being splayed on a dance floor
  • sitting down to Mom’s red beans and rice
  • giving birth
  • the weight of the heart
  • surgery, caring for a wound
  • looking at rhubarb
  • seeing pop-up memorials
  • going through menopause 
  • holding a dancing shoe
  • donning petticoats
  • deciding what the artwork isn’t
  • and more! 
 
As always, it was a true pleasure to read all the submissions and difficult to make choices. I’m sorry not to have been able to include everyone. But each response opened up yet another way of seeing the art.
 
Donna and I thank you for your wonderful responses. 
 
Happy writing!
 
Sandi Stromberg 
 
***
 
Wonder
 
When I see a piece
of abstract art
titled ‘untitled’
I wonder.
Could she not find the words
to describe her thoughts,
or could she not be further bothered
after all the effort of putting  paint to paper.
 
Or does she seek to communicate
something more profound
and wondrous.
and thus insists,
that the viewer 
has full freedom
of interpretation
with no clues given
as guidance
to sort out the shapes
and colours,
the lines and blotches
falling on the surface
of the paper
like leaves
in fall,
or
the decaying detritus
of modern life
falling
like art.
 
So I put myself in the picture
and take a wander
in wonderland.
 
Lynn White
 
Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Consequence Magazine, Firewords, Vagabond Press, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes Journal. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com///www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/
 
***
 
Untitled
 
A rhubarb travels
At warp speed. NASA captures.
Q: God, or garden? 
 
Jenna K Funkhouser
 
Jenna K Funkhouser is an artist and writer living in Portland, Oregon. Her poetry has recently been published by Geez Magazine, the Saint Katherine Review, and Vita Poetica, among others. She is currently working on her second volume of poetry, an ekphrastic exploration of fully inhabited lives.
 
***
 
 
To donne e perkins Regarding Untitled
 
Is this to eye but disarray
or bloom that seeds by its decay
the truth that lies in moments framed
no matter whether ever named
 
that are embrace of doubt and yet
are all that somehow they beget
as purpled proof through prism seen
of light they bend to make them mean
 
whatever they have left behind
that beckons someone else to find
the beauty to behold as grace
so given, unexplained, its place
 
by force that we can never know
except by faith it leaves to sow?
 
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.
 
***

Not My Mother’s Daughter
 
As I lie spread eagle
across the dance floor, surrounded
by upright legs and gasps, I can feel
my skirt tossed above my waist.
I keep my eyes shut tight for a moment,
imagine I’m dancing cancan
at the Folies Bergère.
 
At least Mama’s not here
to see me making a spectacle
of myself
. Those would be her
exact words. Tomorrow she’d tell
all the neighbors, I could have died
of embarrassment!

 
I just hope she’s looking down
from heaven right now
and has finally, finally learned
to throw her head back and laugh.
 
Alarie Tennille
 
Alarie Tennille graduated from the first coed class at the University of Virginia, where she earned her B.A. in English, Phi Beta Kappa key, and black belt in Feminism. Just so you know, Alarie claims her poem is not autobiographical. Her mother would be the first one on the dance floor. She was known for dancing a solo hula at a few veterans’ conferences shortly after WWII. Since, she didn’t have a shy bone in her body,  Alarie did sometimes wonder how Alice could be her mama.
 
***
 
Big Bang                                                                                            
 
Where once there was nothing, 
a flower is born, 
gloved petals waggling 
in aftershock, 
black capillaries 
haggard in the air. 
Already it’s ragged 
with knowing: 
the pink rubbed 
until red, 
jagged creases  
mapping the centre 
where pistil or cone should be. 
Look long 
and this flower  
deflowers itself, 
splaying its flesh wide open 
in contempt of decency, 
of the hand’s impulse 
to grope for a stem, 
to pluck and to prettify.   
Take me as I am, 
it says, 
Don’t box me in 
with your rules, 
expanding bigger and bigger, 
less and less like a flower, 
more and more like the universe 
it always intended to be. 
 
Janis Geve
 
Janis Geve teaches literature at UMass Amherst, specializing in autobiography, disability studies, and service-learning.  She has published previously in such places as Beltway Quarterly Review, Red Eft Review, The Florida Review and New Delta Review, among other places.
 
***

at the heart of it all

       the average male adult heart
is ten ounces of red muscle
    a woman's a little less
though it will beat faster
to move the same volume of blood
the heartbeat itself the result of
mechanical action
heart valves in motion

           open-close-open-close

                   pit-pat-pit-pat

    it's not the bard's pound of flesh after all

not the true seat of emotion

    yet we'll argue head versus heart

a broken heart really does exist
intense sadness produces pain
with a true physiological basis

unlike in the stories it can heal

     likewise a heart can burst with happiness
             when the left ventricle swells due to joy

    and blood is easier for a heart to pump
when the blood vessels are relaxed
proving laughter really is the best medicine
 
Emily Tee
 
Emily Tee writes poetry and flash fiction.  She's had pieces published in The Ekphrastic Review and for its challenges, and elsewhere online,.and in print in some publications by Dreich and in Poetry Scotland among other places. She lives in the UK.
 
***
 
Aorta

from this very blood
invigorated
you were sustained in
the dark mysteries of my
womb
when we were inseparable
you gladly received our shared
oxygen
and your cells knit together
and you became fully boy
and now
you are fully man
tall strong dimple-faced
life calls you eagerly
and you smile and walk away
leave me
just as it is meant to be
but
my heart
still pumping nutrients
upwards through the arch and down
now
nourishes
grief
in the seat of love

Melinda Dewsbury

Melinda Dewsbury experiences poetry as therapy, a kind of grounding exercise that connects physical embodiment with big ideas and deep truths. During the pandemic, she and her mother wrote Pandemic Poems back and forth to one another. In 2021, their experience was featured in an interview and poetry reading on CBC radio’s On the Coast. Melinda lives in Langley, British Columbia.

***

Ode to My Wound
 
O Wound 
Portal to skin strata 
living on the river of ancient blood.
What demons swim in that stream 
hunting for new cells to join this 
gang of invaders?
 
O Wound 
You were so easy to manage 
when I was young 
a kiss   a bandage  and we 
were safe. But old age has filled 
that pool with too many monsters 
immune to healing potions and poison
 
O Wound 
Are you the final battlefield between skin 
and world   the ill that will take me
                                                           down?
Margo Stutts Toombs
 
Margo Stutts Toombs enjoys creating and preforming poetry. Her work lives in FreezeRay Poetry, Untameable City - Mutabilis Press, the Texas Poetry Calendar, Love over 60: An Anthology of Women’s Poems, The Ekphrastic Review, the Friendswood Library Ekphrastic Poetry Contest, Equinox, and Synkronicity.  She performs spoken-word poetry and monologues at fringe festivals, art galleries and anywhere food and beverages are served. For several years, Margo has been the MC for the poetry/prose readings at Archway Art Gallery in Houston, Texas.

***
 
Spilled Supper Special
 
I love mama’s red beans and rice.
When I tracked in slick leaves
and slid into my chair too eager to eat;
it felt like matricide to be this clumsy,
sending a spoonful of such craftwork
to the floor, extra flattened by fat cat paws.
 
I tried to make up for this mistake,
with hand-folded, colored-pencil cards,
maroon carpet for your morning breakfast
smeared egg whites look well enough to me.
Or is it just another mess?
 
Years later, we each had our own bloody bouts,
the worst war of roses and ripped up reams
of divisive documents and tear-shot dreams,
a perfect picture now torn up and tossed away,
every crease a wrinkle, a white hair, a whimper.
 
I should’ve stirred the sauce some more,
seen our recipes weren’t so different,
or I wouldn’t have let the sun set
on a blooming, burgundy love
that was chewed up, spit out,
found wanting, left lacking--
 
When I sit at the table now,
and look down at the nicely-filled bowl,
and say my prayers as a ruddy light
illuminates my face against the gloom,
I admit that I miss mama.

Only she knows how to make it right.

Alexander Harber
 
Alexander Harber is sometimes an engineer, a LEGO builder, an illustrator, a poet, or a writer. He was born in New Orleans, but was forced to grow up in deep East Texas until he went to college. Now a permanent Houston resident, he is just starting to dip his toes into sharing his creative works with the wider world. Most recently, he was a contributor to the March/April edition of BrickJournal as well as the online multimedia journal Equinox by Hotpoet.


***
 
This is not a painting of…
 
an ailing oak, its prostrate trunk uprooted, 
its bark bruised; its split branches bare.
 
a silent snow-child, freed from a folktale,
tiptoeing out in the chill of a street-lit night.
 
a dead kite, his foxed wings outstretched,
lying in the lane with his roadkill carrion.
 
a pair of neat scissors, cutting and snipping 
a red and pink linen shirt into ragged strips.
 
a wriggle of well-fed earthworms, writhing
through the topsoil in the vegetable patch.
 
a hidden hare, her ears alert, her snout
twitching as she becomes her witch-self.
 
my old heart, beating and pumping blood
to my brain as it fizzes with weird visions.
 
Dorothy Burrows
 
Based in the U.K, Dorothy Burrows enjoys writing poetry, flash fiction and short plays. Her poems have been published in both print and online journals including The Ekphrastic Review. She has always enjoyed searching for faces and figures in clouds.
 
***
 
Letting Go
  
This woman held things
tightly inside her, so tight
that she hugged herself,
 
tied her legs into a knot
bit her tongue until it bled.
 
But when she let go,
she exploded like a bud,
sprawling her petals
 
wide open, calling the eye
to feast on her shades of red,
 
emerging from the shadows.
 
Gary S. Rosin
 
Gary S. Rosin’s poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Concho River Review, contemporary haibun, dadakuku, Eastern Structures, Failed Haiku, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Texas Poetry Calendar, The Wild Word, and Visions International. He has two chapbooks, Standing Inside the Web (Bear House Publishing 1990), and Fire and Shadows (Legal Studies Forum 2008). Two of his ekphrastic poems appear in Silent Waters, photographs by George Digalakis (Athens, 2017). He is the author of two chapbooks, Standing Inside the Web (Bear House Publishing, 1990) and Fire and Shadows (Legal Studies Forum, 2008) (offprint). His poems “Viewing the Dead,” and “Black Dogs,” were nominated for Pushcart Prizes.
 
***
 
When Telekinesis Trumps Precognition
 
All her works were now untitled. He had told her that was to be her task, and she had accepted it once she had come to some level of admittedly begrudged acceptance with the situation. It was not overly difficult to assuage her feelings of having sacrificed her artistic mores; she had no choice, after all. He held all she loved hostage: the Sword of Damocles had nothing on the precarious high-wire act that would be her daughter, balanced on tiptoe from a spider-web-thin catenary barely clearing raging cataracts alive and churning with blood hungry Carcharodon carcharias. All she could do to prevent that catastrophe was to produce a new painting for him each day.
 
He rapped his restless fingers against the table, the teak hard and dark, a stage for his prognostications, his forecasts, his foretelling of victory or doom, of his daily deliveries of the events that were to come to true fruition, the fruits of this delicate yet delectable collaboration.  Before he had found her in that out-of-the-way gallery in SoHo, he had worked his way through all the tools of his trade, from chicken entrails (too messy, too smelly, too primeval) to tea leaves (he could no longer stand the taste of it, had to whiten it to an almost purely dairy concoction), Rorschach blots (Freud and his minions be damned) to Tarot (too finite, too many predictable combinations), casting horoscopes (too many phony practitioners) to self-hypnosis (too much aligned and hard-wired to his personality).
 
The paintings at her exhibit had been a transformational experience. With his first glance he saw in each painting the levels of complexity of the world flung aside, the clouds of fog and smoke cleared, some new, unique, exposition of things whose time had arrived, of events that would be set in motion the moment he saw them: births, deaths, wars, cataclysms, all visible there and ripe for him to pluck and set before the world. All he had to do was see them on the page and announce them aloud.
 
“Almost through,” she said, “the ink is drying as I speak.” She manipulated the palette knife along the edge of the painting, shearing the sheet from the block of watercolor paper, handed him the image, curling slightly as it dried, freed now from the constraints of the block. Her eyes downcast, she stepped back. He held the page, aligned it before him on the tabletop, kept his eyes raised to the camera, its red light blinking the countdown. His readings were always more dramatic when he looked down at the image just as the camera came to life, so the audience could see the dawning comprehension on his face: horror, glee, exquisite joy, sly smirk—brief preview of what his stentorian voice would then expound.
 
He lowered his eyes to take in the fresh painting. His mouth opened, his irises expanded, his heartbeat revved up like a street racer, he looked stricken, unbelieving; his eyes strayed from the camera lens, he glanced her way. She was smiling. And then in the next instant he was there, on the wire, precariously balanced, wavering, arms out to his sides, the foaming water and snapping jaws beneath him, and he could see, in his mind’s eye’s final fleeting vision, her beside the desk, stepping into the camera’s view, her arms about her child, announcing to the world what he was only beginning to comprehend.
 
Roy Beckemeyer
 
Roy J. Beckemeyer’s fifth and latest book of poetry is The Currency of His Light, (Turning Plow Press, 2023). Beckemeyer’s work has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards and has appeared in Best Small Fictions 2019. He has designed and built airplanes, discovered and named fossils of Palaeozoic insect species, and has traveled the world. Beckemeyer lives with and for his wife of 61 years, Pat, in Wichita, Kansas. His authors page is at royjbeckemeyer.com.
 
***
 
That Night Was Like Chaim Soutine
 
hanging a carcass of beef, a ripe explosion
again and again. A blossom of red darkness.
 
I did not hear the gunshots. Not even one.
The pink pulse of ambulance and police cars
slipped through our closed blinds.
 
It was Thanksgiving night. We had just eaten
quail.
 
The TV was on—we nursed
our island of wounds.
 
It's no metaphor—how the pus drained
from your arm as the murders
across the street occurred.
 
Daybreak was speckled with flecks of light.
Neighbors and reporters shed drops of illumination.
I felt the blood in the artery behind my right ear.
 
Christmas decorations were affronted by morning.
We took out the trash.

Vanessa Zimmer-Powell
 
Vanessa Zimmer-Powell’s poetry has aired on the radio and has been published in numerous journals and anthologies. Recently, she has taken an interest in writing and filming cinepoems and has been a ReelPoetry and Gulf Coast Film Festival juried cinepoet and filmmaker. Awards include first place winner of the 2017 and 2016 Houston Poetry Fest ekphrastic competition, top honors in the 2017, 2019, and 2021 Friendswood Library ekphrastic poetry competitions, and finalist in the 2023 ReelPoetry festival. Her chapbook, Woman Looks into an Eye is published by Dancing Girl Press.

***
 
Tankas
 
Russian ballerina
exhales like a red lacewing
in a shadowbox,
butterfly over the burnt
dirt—no one hears her heart’s voice.
 
*
 
Inverted, I write
embrace, maroon costumes merge.
The graceful dancers
never worry past night's flight,
never worry past their lips.

John Milkereit
 
John Milkereit resides 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 and San Pedro River Review, and previous issues of The Ekphrastic Review. He has published two chapbooks (Pudding House Press) and three full-length collections of poems, including most recently, A Place Comfortable with Fire(Lamar University Literary Press).

***
 
Marked
 
The leaf has the markings of a Paul Klee
squiggles        dots      crosses
on terracotta crust    crisp beneath her feet
 
it reminds her of the lines drawn on the canvas of her skin
a map for the surgeon’s knife
to slice through tissue and tumour
 
it is the tattoo she never asked for
the image cut in soft-light rouge
inked    pitied   reviled
 
she lifts the leaf    fingers the veins
soft ridges like scars running on rust
subconsciously places hand over womb
 
feels the hollow dryness of parchment
like a page erased     wordless
lets it fall in autumn soil to mulch    compost
 
Kate Young
 
Kate Young lives in England and enjoys writing poetry, painting and playing the guitar and ukulele. Her poems have appeared in various webzines, magazines, and Chapbooks. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlet A Spark in the Darkness has been published by Hedgehog Press and her next pamphlet Beyond the School Gate has been accepted for publication in 2023. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet.
 
***
 
Menopause: The Graphic Novel
 
Maybe I’m projecting and this is not a vagina
maybe its a tarantula, maybe it’s a heart
 
flattened by love, the sinister kind. I see a hint 
of giant squid: mantle, funnel, frill and not a small amount 
 
of flutter. Last summer I stopped shaving my legs 
in solidarity with my daughter and to protest
 
the performative nature of sex, but now
I miss the smooth skin under my own hands
 
and wonder who did I set out to punish?
I thought the small hairs would be like eyelashes
 
but they were more recalcitrant than that. Clearly
I’ve lost sight of who I once was. By definition
 
I have been divine but also lacking in big-picture 
capacity thinking. See the foamy waves? This 
 
is an ocean-floor noir, a catch-me-if-you-dare 
type of situation. I initially thought iris, but 
 
beardtongue is more sleeper than place-keeper
in the garden bed, calling now: come little hummingbird
 
to my wet feeder; this nectar is all yours. Two-lipped and heavy 
with seed, we’ve reached the tree line first learned about 
 
on the topographical map of Maine. A smoking gun, a cigarette 
you bummed and let turn to ash without once 
 
putting it to your mouth. Capricious at the best of times, 
a warm bed, a place to lay your frozen shoulder.
 
Crystal Karlberg
 
Crystal Karlberg is a Library Assistant at her local public library and a speaker for Greater Boston PFLAG. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in: oddball magazine; Lily Poetry Review; Threepenny Review, Beloit Poetry Journal; Penn Review.
 
***
 
Dance Shoes
 
Some days you come unexpectedly
across altars, temporary tributes to
tragedies, pop-up memorials - 
outpourings of love.
 
Cards and candles and stuffed animals
among other tiny remembrances
lean against wire fences or lie upon
public stairs that lead to loss.
 
My eye is drawn to a black and white
Oxford saddle shoe.  Upon closer study,
I see it's fitted with taps at toe and heel.
But there's just one dance shoe,
 
its mate nowhere to be found among
the other curiosities.  Somewhere beyond
this memorial, someone sits alone
in a bedroom on the side of a bed
 
sobbing, holding the other shoe
pressed against a heaving chest,
whose heart continues to tap
its syncopated rhythm –
 
heel toe, heel toe, heel toe.
 
Mark Jodon

Mark Jodon is the author of a full-length collection of poetry, Day of the Speckled Trout (Transcendent Zero Press) and a limited edition chapbook, What the Raven Wants (Provision Press). He is an Iconoclast Artist. His poetry was recently published in Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality and the Arts (Northeastern University.

**

Love in the Age of Petticoats
 
                                                                     "Little Nancy Etticoat
                                                                     In a white petticoat,
                                                                     And a red nose..
                                                                     The longer she stands,
                                                                     The shorter she grows."
                                                                            Child's Rhyme, Mother Goose
 
                                                                     "....paint char on the page."
                                                                            Marsden Hartley, Letter To Chagall
 
                                                                     "As evening came on, the light became
                                                                      more and more bewitching...Things weren't
                                                                      simply lit up, they radiated light from within."
                                                                             Jean-Luc Bannalec, The Granite Coast Murders
 
      1,  Day Dreams
 
       Windmills bring good luck in Paris    turning in the wind
       at the Moulin Rouge.    As the century turned in a farm house
 
       outside Austin    my grandmother and her sisters were required
       to lie down in the heat of the day    stripped to cotton chemises
 
       and petticoats, a light breeze    from the open windows
       catching curls on their damp foreheads    as they pretended
 
       to sleep in the hot afternoons.    Up since 5 doing chores,
      filling hours of grief until evening     after their mother died,    
 
      they carried lunch to their father    building fences in the fields.
      The 2 oldest knew Latin, trained to be teachers;    and my grand-
 
      mother sewed, making everyone's clothes    and I guess you could say
      she fell in love with the potential of fabric --    plaids and taffetas,
 
      white lawn and black velvet --    one gown I remember, dress-up
      for a dance in the school cafeteria    where she practiced the fine art
 
      of dance steps...    And when I came along, there was ballet and tap
      (shuffle, ball, change)     in a room with high ceilings, for music
 
      and echoes    (I was eager to leave, to walk by the ball field) --
      Would Satine find Christian    under the bleachers?
 
     2.  The Petticoats Go To Paris
 
      Monsieur Lautrec    sits in a chair holding his artist's sketch book
      as girls come from below    running up to their rooms in the Red Mill,
 
      stripping off clothes as they go    wearing only their petticoats
      and camisoles.    A girl who sings La Vie en Rose
 
     will pose for the artist in a bathtub -- La Toilette --    her bare
     shoulder blades, shadow-blue with cold    resemble wings of angels
 
     son amies to Jane Avril    who does the Can-Can, printed on a poster,
     Jardin de Paris    where the latest gossip is about an elephant
 
     in the garden.    "How odd that shooting stars have become
     the sky crying," Satine says to Christian    hiding her heartbreaking
 
     secret (she will die of consumption)    to which Christian replies,
     Oh, God, that I might kiss you one last time....    So long as there is breath
 
     in my body, Satine, my soul    shall seek yours wherever it wanders*....
 
     3.  How many petticoats?
 
      How many petticoats    was my grandfather's game.  He'd ask his question
      with a laugh, knowing it had to be at least 2 or 3    (he made fun
 
      of how many)    for a well-dressed pre-teen in the late 1950's;
      and then it was 1963    as black satin (in French, the Satine) slipped
 
      over my body    all the way down to a rash of red petticoats, ruffles
      fading to shades of lost pink and mauve    "Let me see,"
 
      my grandmother called from her sewing machine    as I pulled on
      black hose, and long black gloves    a graduation gift from a great aunt,
 
      one of her sisters.    My face looked out at me from a mirror
      as I pinned the night-black feather on my headband    in the spirit
 
      of Satine and Christian --    high jinks, romance, fabric in fragments,
      the petticoat illusion of Can-Can kicks --    Is this how the French
                                                                                         lost their innocence?
                                                                                      In abstract art, Untitled
                                                                                  when time was a chorus line of color --
 
       Laurie Newendorp
 
       *Christian's speech is an adaptation of Raphael West's farewell to Jane Austen.
 
Laurie Newendorp lives and writes in Houston.  Her book of poetry, When Dreams Were Poems, matches life and its realities to reality's other side, the illusory nature of living to old age; and how women explore the nature of passion, expressed, as it is, in the story of Christian and Satine (the star-crossed lovers of the Moulin Rouge) and in the spirit of art, passed from generation to generation.
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