 Nkisi Power Figure, by the Kongo Peoples (Angola or Democratic Republic of the Congo) 19th century The Warrior This then the shrapnel from the war we survived. I, the crowned victor, carry the plaque psoriasis, encased in the armor of post-covid fatigue syndrome. Karen FitzGerald Karen FitzGerald is a genre-fluid writer who celebrates her every/any work of publication with a vodka martini even though she resides in Sonoma County's wine country. ** The Kongo Nkisi Nkondi and the Riding Dog This poem is inspired by the Nkisi Power Figures found in Kongo in Africa. These figures could be human or animal and are meant to ward off evil and protect the helpless. The poem is also inspired by the animals that sometimes, some humans exploit for some advantage. Walking in the rain, on the grass, at dawn or dusk. I feel calm. Only the simplest of sounds nourish my brain’s husk. No piercing cries of people or animals in agony, heartache, or menace. Wonder if we’ll have to pay a penance? Flowers smelled like vanilla, jasmine, and musk. No pain, or stain from perfumed glands removed. Am I feeling a lie? A self-created utopia? How else can we remain a bit normal without positive cornucopia? Walking, dipping my feet in summer fresh rain. Easing the stutter of life. Oh, what a gain! Incessant, loud knocking was soon heard. Was that a woodpecker or another bird? Seemed to come from the main door. Louder than an oil bore. It were the dilemmata who’d come calling again. Like visitors who came too early, too often, and overstayed. Behind them stood many Nkisi on their sturdy dogs. An army of them. Minkisi. Standing with purpose, resolve, mission. Without any human permission. Or intervention. Out to rectify, destroy evil. Gesturing me to polish my husk with coconut oil and let not my anxieties boil. Oh, they were here to ease the strain! “Are there enough of you? The world’s breaking down…we need you…” I shouted as they rode on their dogs over the backyard fences into the orange sun. Ancient sacred medicines and divine protections tied to blades and knives on their bodies. Our wrongs crucified in them, like in Jesus. Their spiritual mirrors splintering. Each reflection whispering, chiding. Oh, where do we hide humanity’s shame! One final, quick moment, the Nkisi and their dogs turned around. Keen eyed. Cautious. Waiting. Waiting for gods and goddesses to follow on their vehicles…lions, horses, camels, peacocks, serpents, bulls, dragons, and mice. I heard the message from their souls, thrice. Roll the dice. Roll the dice. Hey girl, roll the dice. Let not go of remaining pieces of smiles, kisses, touches, and memories. Oh, their magical refrain! Anita Nahal *Minkisi: Plural of Nkisi Anita Nahal, Ph.D., CDP, is a two-time Pushcart Prize-nominated Indian-American author-academic. She was a finalist for the Tagore literary prize 2023. Anita has one novel, four poetry collections, one of flash fiction, four for children, and five edited anthologies published. Anita’s poems have been anthologized in over twenty international anthologies and hundreds have been published in journals in the US, Asia, and Australia. Anita’s poem has been selected for the Polaris Trilogy, Moon project where it will join thousands of other writers and artists whose work will be delivered to the moon in a capsule by Space X in 2024. ** Maggie’s Museum Granny Maggie’s living room was a curated curiosity shop of figures, amulets, talismans, and knick knacks: a print of Ebisu, the Japanese god of the sea, all jolly and fat and riding a fish; a bronze lamp Minotaur masticating a virgin; a window hung with a hundred dream catchers with fading feathers. ‘Is this another new one?’ Mammy rolled her eyes at a blue Kali. "One woman’s junk is another woman’s treasure," Granny said, slurping Lyons tea from a Kintsugi mug made of mismatched sherds of China. When I was little, I never fancied real toy shops with their plastic dolls and polyester bears. For Christmases and birthdays Granny let me choose something from her collection. She would nudge me saying: "I get them wholesale direct from Santa." The last figure I took was a wooden carved replica of the Rahara Sile-na-Gig with her twisted plaits and toothy grimace. "I don’t know if this is appropriate for you, Annie," Mammy hissed at me. "I never dragged you up to be ashamed of your body, though those bloody nuns did their best to tell you otherwise," Granny winked at her, "and not forgetting that you even resorted to rubbing Ms Rahara's gee when you were trying to conceive my favourite grandchild here." Mammy conceded with a sigh and I gathered us all in for the tightest of bear hugs. After, Mammy looked at Granny. ‘What’s going to happen to all of this when you’re gone?’ "Well, there’s too many grave goods to be buried with me," Granny said, "so I’ll just have to have myself mummified, all dried out and stuffed with herbs, and stuck back in here. Annie can run this as a business, call it Granny’s Believe it or Not." First I belly laughed, then I gulped. "I better start on making all the labels now so." Bayveen O'Connell Bayveen O'Connell is an Irish writer who takes inspiration from art, history, mythology, folklore, and travel. Her flash fiction has been nominated for Best Microfiction and the Pushcart Prize. ** Epistle to the Nkisi Here, we call the unknown John Doe, or a curio, a piece to appraise-- absent the nganga who knew you and your value. We know only you’re not of us, Belgium, or who turned your people Christian, or men who shipped fathers mothers, brothers, sisters like oil in the deep bellies of vessels. There is an emptiness at sea-- I’ve read—some people never fill. You smell of crude, lemon-pepper, fruit of African elemi. Are you a body of that tree, whittled, pedestaled, nailed, robbed-- ripped from the nganga’s copper hands? You look like the homeless soldier off U.S. 40, that washed-out sign over a cavity of grief. What more could we offer, Nkisi? We give you a glass case, dry air, a place to slow the rust and rot, poetry in a new language your people have never thanked us for. Can you heal me, Nkisi? I need to know your value. I’m American. Robert E. Ray Robert E. Ray is a retired public servant. His poetry has been published by Rattle, The Ekphrastic Review, The Muleskinner Journal, The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press, Wild Roof Journal, The Nuthatch, and Beyond Words Literary Magazine. Robert is a graduate of Eastern Kentucky University. He lives in rural southeast Georgia. ** Self-Sacrifice I weep, knowing my power comes from sharp edges, fierce training, pushing compassion away. Do my people even know how much I love them? 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. Please visit her new website at https://www.alariepoet.com ** Sacred Medicine Bodies of pain reflect in eyes of sorrow So many in need of healing kept inside a mystic mirrored box Wounds driven deep every blade every nail a symbol a sacrifice to spirits of the dead Kathleen Cali Chicago-born and Midwest raised, Kathleen resides at the Jersey Shore. Her poetic interests include formal and modern poetry and haiku. Always the student, she enjoys poetry writing workshops and working with her local library. Other interests include historical fiction and photography. Kathleen enjoyed a career as a senior auditor and educator and served as an assistant professor of business following receipt of her MBA. Technical writing and editing were a major part of her profession; now she uses her skills to craft poetry. Her poetry has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review; her haiku was published in her local community’s magazine. ** To a Nkisi Power Figure You have, by loving hands, been wrought to signify what time has taught -- the wrath and love without control of power still your tribes extol as presence of the unexplained creating circumstance ordained as challenge they are meant to meet and curatives they dare entreat as they embark on chosen course embracing risk without remorse in journey destined not by chance but legacy that chains the dance reminding them as remnants sewn they prove the power through you known. Portly Bard Portly Bard: Prefers to craft with sole intent... of verse becoming complement... ...and by such homage being lent... ideally also compliment. Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise for words but from returning gaze far more aware of fortune art becomes to eyes that fathom heart. ** I Am a Man Who Carries the World on His Back I am a man who carries the world on his back. I am a man who has done nothing but pluck tulip petals for joys and toys. And I kissed the lips of a girl who'd happily sell my soul for a bed or two sacks of coal. I am a man who has broad shoulders and a bald, worried head. Many days I have wished I were dead. But each day I grew less fussy and happier I was. With nothing to buy back my soul My heart beat steadily and was strong. I am a man who has toiled in the dirt. I am a man who has nursed others back to health—near death. I am a man who has cried all night till dawn and then cried some more. I am a deeply bereaved man. I am a man who has endured love and hatred. I am a man who has been bereft without any place to go or drift. No place to call home, no kingdom to roam in. I am a man who wears a crown made of the jawbone teeth of a lion. But I have no pride; I am just a carcass that doesn't know it's already died. I am a man who carries the world on his back. And questions the meaning and value of everything bartered and sold. Many days I have wished I were dead. But each day I grew less fussy and happier I was. With nothing to buy back my soul The best way to live and find peace is to give up all control and blow and bend with the wind. Mark Andrew Heathcote Mark Andrew Heathcote is an adult learning difficulties support worker. He has poems published in journals, magazines, and anthologies online and in print. He resides in the UK and is from Manchester. Mark is the author of In Perpetuity and Back on Earth, two books of poems published by Creative Talents Unleashed. ** Powerman He bristles with power, unmistakable untouchable the spirits and demons held close inside him to be released at his behest. But only in Africa. When he leaves, stolen taken then he’s powerless like all the other stolen ones. So much power left behind in Africa. 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. ** Calling the Names How to consecrate time? Must it be burned to ash and extinguished into darkness in order to fertilize new ground? Must it cleave to the cries of death against the ravenousness of life? shadows speak inside the spirit of the abyss Secrets hold the future-- what do you desire? Is it wise? Can it be trusted? You reject the meanings of words and stitch instead the sound of stone-- ancient remote primal eternal-- across a bridge of incoherence like a necklace of unfinished spells. shadows speak inside the spirit of the abyss There is no symmetry in before and after-- only the contrast of what won’t fit into the patterns humans have constructed to explain the instability of transformation. The mirror lies, mocks, defies the body caught inside its fragile bones of light. shadows speak inside the spirit of the abyss Kerfe Roig A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/ (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/. ** The Nganga Smiles: His Work is Done She opens the gift box, the tag left blank. The sculpted beast nestled inside leaves her as petrified as some of the wood from which it is carved. Who would leave such a “gift”? Its body also has parts crafted from iron, a protective armour that she had not had, a shield that would have protected her human skin from the worst of penetrations. She is simultaneously jealous and reminded of being powerless. Its body is callously stabbed with various nails and shivs of iron, imitations of the blades plunged into her own human flesh, but its lack of nociceptors is the cruelest mocking of her nearly lethal pain. Its marble eyes give an eerie stare, one she cannot understand but sends her haunting reminders of…him. Its glazed expression, an echo of the deranged, piercing stare she cannot forget. The evil fixation looming over her as she lay ravished victim pinned under his hostile thrusts. Its open mouth is able to demand the same way her perpetrator did, and able to scream unlike her stifled mouth choked off to obsolescence. Its stomach is embedded with a box holding what she fears is the knife her assailant had wielded, the mirrored door showing the reflection of her own broken body, one she no longer recognizes. She is captive in foreign skin tarnished with scars. She shutters and shuts the lid of the gift box, unable to bear the site of the small bedeviling totem. She grips the sides of the box as if needing to ensnare a flailing monster, trying to decide whether to bury it, burn it, or just throw it away. But, as her forearm quivers with her mighty clutch, she feels something. At first, it’s a tingly sensation in her hands, a warmth that feels more human than her alien skin has yet felt. This heat extends through her arms, her shoulders, her neck. It’s an itch that can’t be scratched. It must be diffused from the inside. She takes a deep breath in, discovering an extensibility in her lungs she hasn’t felt since that…day. The breath plunges the sensation downward through her body, through her abdomen, which isn’t the hollow mechanical box, but a soft, organic form. It passes through her womb, her mutilated tissues, her thighs. Another breath propagates the sensation even further, reaching all the way down through her feet and toes, grounding her into the earth, her bare skin rooting into the soil. She is simultaneously hot and cold, aware that she is sentient, but not in the vulnerable way she last remembers her humanity, but in a comforting whisper of what she’s been searching for. She can hear the familiar lub-dub in her chest, but her pulse is not thundering in terror. Instead, it is drumming strength, power, and energy. She takes another breath, deciding to face the mystical statue in the box. She realizes that this time, she is in control. She can always shut the lid. She can always run away. This creature is inanimate. Her trembling fingers lift the box. At first, just a crack. The relic is unchanged, but her own lenses have adjusted. Its ghostly stare now seems soulful, almost feeble like a motherless child. Its parted lips aren’t mocking her muted shrieks but rather bellowing on her behalf, summoning help, not just for what she needed during the assault, but also for the help she needs now to heal. The iron fortress of the body isn’t a selfish protection taunting her fragility. It is a reminder that human skin means she’s still alive…that surviving was a gift. And the shanks of metal studding its surface are not sardonically jeering her. Instead, this lifeless sacrificial lamb is accepting the stabs to offload her visceral memories. Finally, she reexamines the cavern in its abdomen. She wants to look inside to make sure it is not concealing weapons. But, as she lifts her fingers to open the mirrored lid, she sees everything in her reflection she’s been needing to see: a confident steadiness in her human hands, a willful hope in her eyes. So, she places her hand over the amulet’s protruding belly and just holds it there for a minute. That warm tickle permeates her palm again. She takes one more deep breath, inhaling a sense of healing, a sense of confidence, a sense of peace. She holds the breath, each oxygen molecule ricocheting to every destroyed cell of her body. When she’s ready, she exhales, releasing the pain, releasing the anger, releasing the fear. She is no longer afraid of the effigy in her hands, she’s no longer afraid of herself. She is a warrior, holding a warrior. Amber Sayer Amber is not new to the world of writing, as she is a professional health and fitness writer by trade. However, she hasn't done any creative writing in over 20 years and is excited to start exploring the depths of her imagination and tapping into the power of expressing her feelings through words. ** Healing Illness Zozobra: anxiety and fear. Body piercing Z’s, zeroing into me, leaving me sucking on stones to survive. I experience the painful arrows of zozobra until I realize how to dispel the angst and its paralytic grasp. I grow the figure of a woman, just my height, just my girth. I interweave branches and leaves for her hair and patch together a head with cloth and glue. I ring her eyes with black grunge and plump out red lips. I hollow out logs for legs and arms, and mold wire into a round body and girded breasts. A life-sized creature stands before me; her guttural voice courses out words: I promise to spurn your negative energy and replace it with calm. But nothing happens, no epiphany of strength. It is not enough to build this figure to banish the darkness and erase regret and sorrow. I have to do more. With anger at my heels and joy in my fingers, I tear through my house gathering medical bills, journal rants, legal documents of failure, and photographs of nemesis and spite. Then I stuff the figure with shreds of worry and gloom, filling her with the vestiges of the years I need to forget. I drape her in clothing that reminds me of sickness and decay, regret and dispute. I stand back to admire my creation, but the figure frowns, her lips tighten with disgust. You have one more command to accomplish before your job is done. I seek out my labyrinth, my place of peace. I enter its sacred path asking the all-encompassing questions: What is next for me? Where do I go from here? I emerge like a bird released. I wreathe the head of my effigy in cactus and thorns and stand back like a photographer measuring light and space until I am satisfied that she will speak with soft hushes, not spike and blade. I am ready, she says. I douse her from head to toe with gasoline. . .and light the match. The Burning Woman growls and crackles, spits and sizzles. Fire leaps from limb to limb, igniting the past and reducing her to ash. I glow in her wake. Ruth Weiner Ruth Weiner is an educator, author, avid cyclist and insatiable reader. She has three published novels, Veronica Recycled, The Mahjong Mavens of Boca Raton, and Milli Finds Her Bench. ** Manifesto to King Leopold II Our arms and legs hands and feet only mean rubber to you. But we Kongolese are a spiritual people and the amputations you inflict when we don’t meet our quotas can still resist your threats. We place the nkisi nkondi before you. Feel those blades. Feel our rage. We wrap ourselves in sharp-shard shrouds to cut through your rhetoric, shred that almighty rubber and your legacy. Barbara Krasner Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and a PhD in Holocaust & Genocide Studies from Gratz College. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Chicken Fat (Finishing Line Press, 2017) and Pounding Cobblestone (Kelsay Books, 2018). Her poetry has also appeared or is forthcoming in Cimarron Review, Nimrod, Vine Leaves Literary, Tiferet, and other publications. She lives and teaches in New Jersey. Her website is www.barbarakrasner.com.
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 Young Woman Seated, by Antônio Rafael Pinto Bandeira (Brazil) 1896 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 Young Woman Seated, by Antônio Rafael Pinto Bandeira. Deadline is June 7, 2024. 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. 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 BANDEIRA CHALLENGE in the subject line. 6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight EST, June 7, 2024. 9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is. 10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 15. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages! 16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.  Horoscope of Prince Iskander, by the Royal Kitabkhana Workshop of Persia (Persia) 1411 The Zodiac Gallery at the Bialystoker Shul As we walk the streets of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, I inhale centuries of history, my feet yearning to slide into ancestor steps. On Willett Street, we come upon a large synagogue, once the prayer house of my great-grandparents. Great-grandmother Esther Taube couldn’t read in any language. She knew the ancient Hebrew prayers by sound. From the women’s balcony, she stared at each of the twelve images in the zodiac gallery, cerulean blue, maize yellow, vermilion, so vibrant against the tenement grays. She savoured the pascal lamb for Aries. She weighed the golden Libra scales, reminding her of how casting her sins into the ocean at Rosh Hashonah evened the score. She admired the two perched parrots facing each other against a robin’s eggshell sky--a reminder of Shavuos, the two tablets of the Commandments, and the Polish canvas she missed. She would not have known that the mural for Cancer portrayed a lobster and not a crab, because what would she know about unkosher crustaceans? But it made a pretty picture. Barbara Krasner Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and a PhD in Holocaust & Genocide Studies from Gratz College. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Chicken Fat (Finishing Line Press, 2017) and Pounding Cobblestone (Kelsay Books, 2018). Her poetry has also appeared or is forthcoming in Cimarron Review, Nimrod, Vine Leaves Literary, Tiferet, and other publications. She lives and teaches in New Jersey. Her website is www.barbarakrasner.com. ** A Most Ambitious Sign The constellations tell us you were born under the sign of Taurus. The planets aligned to protect you ... the zodiac foretold your success. There were promises of victory, long life, and good fortune. It was in your power to carry out destiny and seize the crown. But you failed to see the stars were blind ... your enemies had other plans. Conquered and imprisoned, it was impossible to believe the heavens had betrayed you. Given the nature of the beast, your ambition could not be tamed ... rebellion was the only answer. The act of treason would be your last. Unfortunately, for young bull Iskandar, no pardon was written in the stars. Kathleen Cali Chicago-born and Midwest raised, Kathleen resides at the Jersey Shore. Her poetic interests include formal and modern poetry and haiku. Always the student, she enjoys poetry writing workshops and working with her local library. Other interests include historical fiction and photography. Kathleen enjoyed a career as a senior auditor and educator and served as an assistant professor of business following receipt of her MBA. Technical writing and editing were a major part of her profession; now she uses her skills to craft poetry. Her poetry has appeared in the Ekphrastic Review; her haiku was published in her local community’s magazine. ** Aligned Illuminators, make their mark with gilders, glyph calligraphers, more, paper-making specialists, as craft exquisite work of art, though here but flyleaf is portrayed. A sample of kitabkhana, to royalty, publishing house - a lavish manuscript laid out, exemplary of Mogul style, star quality in all regards. Sky guardians, each district, four, so Aldebaran, Regulus, with Fomalhaut, Antares too; thus spake these stars, Iskandar’s birth, of Turkman Tamerlane, grandson. As solar, lunar cycle guides, predicting future paths of life, these brightest neighbours of the sun, used to navigate their world, were governors of good and ill. Sohrab, Rustum, battlefields, or Persian rugs, but duly flawed, and flying magic carpet tales, all predetermined fields indeed, by horoscopes’ delineate. Astronomers, theologians, as poets too, courted, gathered before his regnal power assumed; starburst of culture, birthed by him, but soiled ambition, cruel times. Was Regulus, controlling grave when Shah Rukh, uncle, brought defeat, aligned, that royal line dispute? Self-minting coins, credit lost; he’s blinded, executed, end. A horror scope unseen by him. Stephen Kingsnorth Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review. He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com ** It is Writ in the holy scriptures that visionary spectrum calls forth your subterranean self, asks you to transcend what you know, to melt, to cradle your wholeness against the solace of seraphic sky. You glide through the Platonic realm, where you were first conceived, as spark, as aleph, as bay, as Piscean yin yang realisation back to ram of self discovery. Summoned to begin again, you hang dot to dot in the ether of awakening. You floated away with your old soul fragmenting in your wake and now, now you have to grow a new soul, one you were coaxing abloom all along. It’s beautiful out here, in the cosmosis of all-knowing self, an undoing of all you knew. It is the arrival of fourth sky plane, dream world caverns, a purging of consciousness, an arabica of joy. You are a puzzle of rapture calligraphed anew. You always knew you belonged somehow, you just didn’t know how until now. All this time, enlightenment was hiding in plane sight, if only you had peeked beyond the mayan skyscape at the edge of the woebegone world. You are the lone navigator of your new winged demeanour. But you are not alone and that is a double joy, a multiplicity of realm and heaven. What need do you have for the fetters of earth self any longer when you’re the cosmic ultramarine dream? Except it’s all the more real, hyper-real, than it’s ever been. The perfect maths of things anchoring all chaos, not really chaos, but the finest celestial order. The whole hangs as neatly as it always was and will never not be. At long last, you become we, become all, become one, a longing fulfilled and untangled in the multiverse of doors to dreams spun real from art fantasia. Come now, let us cartwheel through the starscape of surrender, and dissolve deep into its alchemy soup. Nina Nazir Nina Nazir (she/her) is a British Pakistani poet, artist and avid multi-potentialite based in Birmingham, UK. She's had work published in various journals, includingThe Ekphrastic Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, and Unlost Journal to name a few. You can usually find her writing in her local favourite café or on Instagram: @nina.s.nazir and X (Twitter): @NusraNazir. She blogs regularly at https://sunrarainz.wordpress.com ** The Horoscope On the 25th April 1384, in a fine palace in Uzgand in Fergana in the Timurid Empire, Prince Iskandar, son of Umar Shaikh Mirza, grandson of Timur, the Mongol conqueror, was born. On the 25th April 1384, in a one-roomed, dirt-floored mud-walled shack in the shadow of the Imperial palace of Uzgand, Malikat was born. The daughter of Fakhira and the granddaughter of Bakht, she was named after Prince Iskandar’s mother. Prince Iskandar’s mother, Malikat Agha, daughter of the Khan of Mogalistan and senior wife of Umar Shaikh, was exhausted after the birth of her second son. She passed him to the wet nurse who handed him to his father and grandfather to anoint him. The news of Prince Iskandar’s birth came to Malikat’s mother as she nursed her newborn daughter. That is good, she said. To have your stars aligned with a Prince’s is good. May your life be as lucky as his, my little one. Umar Shaikh consulted an astrologer. The astrologer consulted the stars. Like you, your son will be a fine warrior, he said. Under his leadership your powerful Timurid dynasty will grow and grow. Good, said Umar Shaikh. I will call him Iskandar, protector of men, in honour of Alexander the Great. In the shack beneath the palace with its stone minarets and domed halls, Fakhira kissed the dark, downy hair on her baby’s head, breathing in her newness and whispered, I will call you Malikat, my precious. Prince Iskander’s mother is a good and kind woman and you shall be blessed to carry her name. Malikat and Izkandar grew under the same stars and worlds apart. Before Malikat could walk she was carried through the lanes and alleys between the shacks by her barefoot brothers - five wiry boys with dark curls and dark eyes. Behind the walls of the palace, Iskandar and his brothers learned how to be warriors. When Malikat walked, her brothers held her hands. When she could run, they chased her. When she learned to dance they twirled her round as she laughed. One by one they grew and worked with their father, hawking along the Silk Road. One by one they slipped away to their new wives and the Prince’s army. Umar Shaikh died in 1394. Iskandar was ten years old and already the governor of Fars. He was chosen to accompany his father’s body to his burial in Kesh. His older brother became Governor in his place. Iskandar was his grandfather’s favourite. He was a bold but unconventional warrior He rode alongside Timur and brought him success through his victories. However, he made enemies of his brothers and cousins. When Timur died, brother fought brother and cousin fought cousin. In 1397 Iskandar married Biki Sultan, the first of his three wives. They had five sons. Her father said when Mailikat sang the birds quietened the better to listen. She was wooed by all of their neighbours’ boys. She too married. She delivered five daughters safely. Malikat cared for her husband and her daughters and her mother and her father, scraping meals from the discarded scraps of the market stalls. Iskandar was a cultured man, a patron of the arts and literature, printing books and developing libraries. In 1410 he commissioned a personal horoscope depicting the position of the stars and planets at the time of his birth. The finest example of the era, it had twelve sections, one for each astrological house, and the twelve signs of the Zodiac within. The exquisite lapis lazuli and gold leaf decoration was all applied by hand and took astronomers, illuminators, gilders, calligraphers and paper makers over a year to complete. Its earthly interpretation of the celestial heavens was to Iskandar’s liking. The astrologists foresaw a long life with great success on the battlefield and in the arts. A prince to be remembered for eternity. In 1411 after long sieges, Iskandar took Yazd and then Isfahan. He declared himself Sultan and made Isfahan his capital. In 1411 Malikat’s father died. Her brothers carried his body to his burial place as she and her mother wept. Having fought with brothers, fought with cousins and switched alliances back and forth, in 1415, four years after his horoscope was completed, the soothsaying of his dazzling horoscope deserted Iskandar. He lost his lands to his brothers and cousins, was blinded by Rustam, his elder brother, and imprisoned under the custody of Bayqara, another brother. He escaped but was captured by nomads who handed him over to Rustam, who ordered his execution. News of Prince Iskandar’s death came to Malikat’s daughters in the days after Malikat’s death in childbirth, delivering a much-longed for son. He was named Iskandar. Caroline Mohan Caroline Mohan is based in Ireland and writes sporadically - mostly stories with the occasional poem and mostly in workshops. ** vanishing in reverse once the wheel was discovered it rolled endlessly, infinitely and beyond half moon, whole moon, none at all-- there is always more even inside subtraction I don’t know where my body goes when my mind is in reverie—to the stars? is there anywhere to go? this journey I dream leads back to itself—a gem set into life, shimmering-- the end, a circle, a breath, completed, released Kerfe Roig A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/ (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/. ** Order of Dreams Symmetry, exquisite with order blue with calm and gold with entrancement belies truth in living-- such real days as jumble shapes and colours, images and apparel leaving us to sort the order and meaning. Carol Coven Grannick Carol Coven Grannick is a poet and children's author, with fiction, poetry, and essays published and forthcoming in many print and online publications for children and adults. Her novel in verse, Reeni's Turn, debuted from Fitzroy Books in 2020. ** Alexander/Iskander Royal Daily Horoscope The day they heard that you had crossed the Hellespont their horoscope spelled a fall into a cryptic hole and in that petrifying proskynesis they failed to grasp your name let alone your budding fame and though on the face of it they feigned their arcane Persian cat game they just about gasped to render the thunder as ‘Iskander’ running in and out of metathesis mess wrecking spitting and choking on demanding euphonic tones of your advancing nominative case. Regardless. The battles rolled in accord with your Delphic oracle horoscope enfolding in only one word –“invincible” – Gaugamela Issus Granicus Babylon... Invincible – the leap of faith of the brilliant pupil of Aristotle who went on to conquer the known world slicing the empire of Darius as a piece of cake. Cesar cried on his supposed grave. Napoleon hosted him in his dream. Too late - they had long passed that starry teen moment of the Macedonian boy-king. And this became his horoscopes refrain though no horoscope could explain Alexander’s impossible charismatic domain of a mortal adored and abided as in trance hugged as a brother and idol at once. Only his mother had a probable clue – Olympias simply believed he was god. You may call it paradox. Moon may move in Pisces. Mars may become real spicy. Taurus may trigger bad choices. Venus may linger in bed late. Regardless. Alexander advances ahead with one weapon at hand – ‘invincible’. In reality as in transcendence. In life as in legacy. In infinity as in the moment… Iskander follows as his spellbound ascendant… Ekaterina Dukas Ekaterina Dukas writes poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning and her poems have been frequently honoured by TER and its Challenges. Her collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europe Edizioni 2021. ** Where Will I Go, What Will I Do? At age nine, grandfather called me to him, showed me this paper where my future was all spelled out for me. Even in the beauty of deep blue, crushed lapis lazuli, could not disguise that this working out of my future in blue and gold, blue ink, bluer than the sky, was meant to set me on the path his advisors mean for me. Even at that tender age I shrank from this determination. History will not recall my name with the honors, accolades earned by Grandfather Tamerlane, but I not let this ink define my destiny. I will live a quiet life. I am my own person-- So now, listen carefully: The wind of history does not whisper of me and that is the way I want it. Joan Leotta Joan Leotta is a poet, author, story performer, and teacher of writing and performing. Her work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review and many other publications. She has been twice nominated for a Pushcart and twice for Best of the Net. At present she is debuting a one-woman show that brings Louisa May Alcott (live!) to audiences. ** Malikat Agha writes to her son, Iskandar. Astrologers are harlots, paid to please. Fairground fakirs one eye on the heavens the other in their pockets, a third watching, seeking clues from their patron. Beware, my son. I am not the favourite wife You are not the favoured son. My horoscope told I would outlive three sons. The greatest, a comet, soaring in beauty through the desert’s blue black sky to astonish all who saw his rise. Great beauty, great power But oh the fall, to sudden total darkness. A son blinded by his brother, cast out, rising in despair to final execution. Beware my son. Hear me. This horoscope will outlive us all. Rennie Halstead Rennie writes poetry and flash fiction. He is a reviewer for London Grip. ** A Planisphere A planisphere portrays the sky as seen by contemplative eye whose constellations reign as sign of geometric, planned design where stoic stars remain serene as moving planets intervene that circle stabilizng sun around which earth is also spun as if by forces they extol much like those found within rhe soul that move the conscience from its birth to journey that returns to earth the legacy it leaves as art preserving course it chose to chart. Portly Bard Portly Bard: Prefers to craft with sole intent... of verse becoming complement... ...and by such homage being lent... ideally also compliment. Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise for words but from returning gaze far more aware of fortune art becomes to eyes that fathom heart. ** Three Haiku Balance a moving stillness world of symmetry and order ** Exquisite calligraphy holy and aesthetic art mathmatical proportions ** Majestic gold and blue ancient signs of the zodiac precisely linked to the heavenly stars Sarah Das Gupta Sarah Das Gupta is a retired teacher from Cambridge, UK; The colours and balance in Islamic Art are so exquisite and precise. ** horror scope what is in the stars for mother earth what on earth is her rising sign as forests burn & oceans heave what on earth sighs the multiverse as air thickens & children die what augury aligns her stars with hope Donna-Lee Smith Donna-Lee Smith writes from deep faith in our future generations.  Nkisi Power Figure, by the Kongo Peoples (Angola or Democratic Republic of the Congo) 19th century 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 Nkisi Power Figure, by the Kongo peoples. Deadline is May 24, 2024. 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. 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 NKISI CHALLENGE in the subject line. 6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight EST, May 24, 2024. 9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is. 10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 15. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages! 16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly. Dear Ekphrastic Challengees, Thank you so much for submitting your Lang-pieces to TER’s ekphrastic writing challenge. It was just wonderful to have received so many pieces; it was just wonderful to have read how your words have been prompted by Katja Lang’s Cloud Shadows… and may I say: beautifully prompted indeed! Congratulations to every single writer that has sent in work; enjoy the selection you find published below. And here’s to you, amazing Lorette, and to TER! Thank you all, be good, Kate Copeland  Cloud Shadows, by Katja Lang (Germany) contemporary. Click image for artist site. I Walk They follow me down this winding path feeling both guardians and stalkers, watching my every step as if they know where I go, even if I do not; hands shoved deep into pockets for warmth, or to hide the shaking I can’t stop. I walk slowly, a lone figure between fields and patchy trees, swooping noisily as if to warn or greet, I’m unsure which, but I feel less alone, more like being escorted into unknown territory, back to the past, moving ever forward toward something unseen. The snow lies serenely quiet; my footsteps mar the cold silence, rhythmic crunch along this path I do not know, I plod along, their shadows are my companion, pushing me on. Julie A. Dickson Julie A. Dickson is a long time poet and lover of ekphrastic poetry, whose works appear in various journals, including Misfit, Blue Heron Review, Open Door and The Ekphrastic Review. Dickson has been a guest editor for several journals, has served on two poetry boards and advocates for captive elephants. She shares her home with two rescued cats, Cam and Jojo. ** Lost Shadows Along the streambed the straight rain pocked the running current sometimes catching the cloud shadows. The wetslick leaves on the greenwall of leaning young trees blurred as they moved and we lifted our faces and found some clues taking each other close through the damp clothes that clung like a layer of skin. We had come here to watch birds but excited only crows: inkblack, black wing, wingspread into night. Royal Rhodes Royal Rhodes taught courses in global religions for almost 40 years. His poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals, including: Ekstasis, The Ekphrastic Review, The Seventh Quarry, Last Stanza, and The Montreal Review, among others. His poetry and art collaborations have been published by The Catbird [on the Yadkin] Press in North Carolina. ** Conjoined A misty, sometimes wispy fog, those passing clouds, ethereal, of shadows, shades - a ghostly term, as sometimes wights amongst wraith graves, grey area, daunt spectral taunt, a phantom though clear sight eclipsed. The corvidae will float above - between the clouds and landed earth - pandemic birds announcing death, the ravens, rooks or crows about with jackdaws, choughs and magpie thieves, a blotting litter of the skies Here’s melancholia, line-hatched incised matrix by stroke, browed burr, by diamond or carbide tips to steel, bare copper needled plate. Like manuscript now duly glossed, intaglio in family, from Housebook Master through the years, a drypoint exercise in gear. Above the dado, hill-top trees, horizon line, point vanish block, but nearer, lower, road through fields, lone figure, dark with shading laid, suggesting sun despite the bleak, as if those clouds deserted rôle. Apart from height above clear light, the grainy bank describes the ground except from patchwork layout there; bold starker markings stripped above like ridge or furrow of the tools, in counter, cut glyphs, vertical. Some order, chaos, yet conjoined? Stephen Kingsnorth Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review. He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com ** Never Returning Birds fleeing the land, sensing dangerous weather, never returning. Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher has been writing since 2010 and has had many micro-flash fiction stories published. In 2018 her book Shorts for the Short Story Enthusiasts, was published, The Importance of Being Short, in 2019 and In A Flash in 2022. She currently resides on Long Island, New York with her husband Richard and dogs Lucy and Breanna. ** Grief Sweeps like an emotional tsunami washes out nature's vibrant hues, life morphs into a somber shade of gray. Heavy rains refuse to abate tears trudge through open fields, overhead, birds soar unnoticed while sorrow clings like wet denim flaunting its unshakable curves of agony. Rapt in sadness, the afflicted takes a solitary stroll down the path of uncertainty. Elaine Sorrentino A huge fan of ekphrasis, Elaine Sorrentino has been published in The Ekphrastic Review, Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Writing in a Women’s Voice, The Poetry Porch, 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. ** The Road We Walk We’ll walk this road until it ends Past trees and birds and fields of corn Becoming lovers and best friends And as our road the Lord extends And adds more hours from when we’re born We’ll walk together till it ends We’ll cling hand-fast when life offends And share the wounds from barb and thorn Because we’re lovers and we’re friends We’ll stay the course that He intends When through the mud and mire we’re drawn And walk along until it ends We’ll share the sunshine that He sends Before the time comes when we mourn The loss of lover and best friend And while our road has curves and bends We’ll travel on for we have sworn To walk this road until it ends Remaining lovers and best friends Alison R Reed Alison R Reed has been writing for many years. She won the 2020 Writers Bureau Poetry competition and has been published both online and in various anthologies, most recently the first Morecambe Poetry Festival anthology. She enjoys experimenting with different poetic forms, especially ones which take her out of her comfort zone. She is a long-time member of Walsall Writers’ Circle. ** Following I waited for the lonely man seems I waited half my life. I waited till the colours poured out of existence. I waited till the birds fell from the clouds like black stones. I waited till there was nothing but scribbles and impressions. Then he came, the lonely man. Along a road that was only an idea, where his shadow was my eye. We met with a certain embrace, knowing the time at last had come and with his arm across my shoulder he led me back to home. Marc Brimble Marc Brimble lives in Spain and when he's not drinking tea or wandering about, he teaches English. ** Snowstorms Iron bars and grills, mute sunlight in winter huts are like mildew; there are the passing signs of snowstorms that exempt us from lodging bigger fears. * Though hammer and nails await commission, only the lonely hunger for confidence in this solitude, confident that the mark on the estuary will come. * Nature is never hideous. The farthest we come, the more merciful will be its promotion. Time Tenderness Imagination are the bare essentials - all survive here. Prithvijeet Sinha The writer is Prithvijeet Sinha, a proud resident of the cultural epicenter that is Lucknow. His prolific published credits encompass poetry, musings on the city, cinema, anthologies, journals of national and international repertoire as well as a blog. His life-force resides in writing, in the art of self-expression. ** And On the Third Day You Might Talk to Me If I see any bears in the forest, I’ll let you know but for now, all I see are black birds. Not blackbirds. Just birds that are black and faceless. No eyes or beaks. And some look like they’ve lost their wings; hover suspended in the sky. Or are they lying dead in the snowfield behind the forest? Depends on your perspective. Just like that fight we had when I said you were too black and white. And you said I’d be better off alone, alone alone alone, that’s what you really want without a monochrome man in your picture. And I said self-pity is a dead tree along a lonely path that leads to a forest where hungry bears hide waiting for wing-less, eye-less, beak-less birds to topple from the sky and one man’s shadow is a lost soul clinging to his feet. When I turned around rain was falling and you were a sharp pencil stroke in the distance. Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman is a poet living and writing in Tabourie Lake, NSW South Coast, in unceded Yiun country. She enjoys seeing her poetry published in journals and anthologies around the world. She was most recently published in Mindfood, and was their 2023 Poetry Award winner. ** Shadows in the Clouds I bought it. I had to. The first time I saw it, the painting called to me, instantly captivating, pulling me in to its restful embrace. Black and white and grays of soft solitude, the kind where you can hear the silence. Well, not true silence. As my son once explained, all those years ago, if you were in true silence, you would hear the hum of your heartbeat and drown in deafening buzz. But the painting conjured human silence. The flap of a dozen wings and the whisper of blades of grass playing hide and seek in the gentle breeze. I propped it against the entrance wall. I meant to hang it. Soon. But it’s hard to decide where. I bought it with barely a thought to actual placement. It’s black and white. It could fit anywhere, right? But small houses with too many doors and windows and lazy decorators who collect boxes of to-be-assembled furniture are a challenge for wall art. I walked by it day after day and finally noticed the lone figure in the middle of the painting. How had I missed it before? I’d mistaken it for a brush or a tree. It was barely a smudge of saunterer casting a long shadow. The only shadow in the landscape. Now, when I passed the painting on my way out the door, I heard the paced gravel footsteps, tick-tock, above the whipping wind. I decided it to try it out in the bedroom and hoisted it on the console. The person on the path walked and walked and I counted their steps, left – right – left – right, crunching, shadow static, as it walked and walked towards the smudge of black trees they never reached. Why was the shadow so long? Where was the sun? The grass on the left side suddenly shimmered and rippled like water. Maybe the path was a riverbank? The sound changed. Graveled steps and the ripples of a creek, a brook, a lake. Frogs, maybe? The painting seeped into my dreams that night, like a lullaby, like a nightmare. I became that person walking, walking, with an ever-growing shadow despite the dense fog. A fog so dense it wrapped itself around me, holding me, pulling me back, although I leaned forward, tasting the wind, the cold, tasteless metal of snow. Snow! That’s what the white was: snow. White winter. Stark dark landscape with leafless trees of brittle branches that barely moved as the wind hissed coils around their trunks. And yet, there was the long lone shadow that suggested the sun. There were birds circling, soaring, thriving in the lift of the wind. There, in the righthand corner, behind the gust, beyond the fog, was a wall, an impenetrable wall of cliffs and precipices and bluffs. When I woke, mouth dry, the first thing I did was banish the thing to the living room. The painting screamed. The birds, vultures, yapped and grunted as the shadow-afflicted hiker walked in place on the path to the dark forest that lay, like an entrance mat, before the austere mountain beyond. Where was the restful silence I’d first envisioned? Gone. Now that the painting had made itself at home, had settled in, had entered my room, shared my night, oozed itself into my dreams, it showed its true colors. Eerie shifting sand, crippling cold, chain-like shadows, monstrous trees, scavenger birds waiting for you to trip, to fall, to fail. I almost threw it out. Instead, I pulled out the box of forgotten crayons and half-dried childhood paints. With a yellow crayon, I poked rays of sunlight through the fog until the trees found their shadows and the shifting ground hugged the grass and grew roots. The light thawed the trees until sap ran in rivulets, painting the branches, flicking blobs of leaves: green, yellow, and freckled olives. Flowers bloomed and the air tasted of lavender, of honey, of the blueberry-lemon-basil scones I baked for breakfast. The vultures shrank into starlings and murmured the blue sky. And the walker in the painting sat in the blooming field. Then lay in the speckled shade of the central tree. Content. Amy Marques Amy Marques has been known to call books friends and is on a first name basis with many fictional characters. She has been nominated for multiple awards and has visual art, poetry, and prose published in journals such as Streetcake Magazine, South Florida Poetry Journal, Fictive Dream, Bending Genres, Ghost Parachute, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Gone Lawn. She is the editor and visual artist for the Duets anthology and has an erasure poetry book coming out in 2024 with Full Mood Publishing. More at https://amybookwhisperer.wordpress.com. ** Morning Wakes to the Singing of Birds As golden daffodil row on row nods And the shadows do fall, drifting far away. As the sun of a new day leads the way Morning wakes to the singing of birds. All are dancing to these hymns now. Even as the snow is late in falling The seasons are changing and filled with hope. Don’t you know? Don’t you know there’s a glistening morning to come? Close and blink your eyes for a hushed moment. And you will feel its warm glow surround you. Like a winding crystal stream heading home. Oh, the morning wakes to the singing of birds. A mountain waterfall is always dreamy. Where the snow falls, it melts into the heather. Crying for springtime, let’s all sing together. All are dancing to these hymns now. Even as the skylarks are crying and weeping, The seasons are changing and filled with hope. Don’t you know? Mark Andrew Heathcote Mark Andrew Heathcote is an adult learning difficulties support worker. He has poems published in journals, magazines, and anthologies, online and in print. He resides in the UK and is from Manchester. Mark is the author of In Perpetuity andBack on Earth, two books of poems published by Creative Talents Unleashed. ** Fifteen Ways Of Looking at a Scavenger (after Wallace Stevens) 1. When I was a child, my grandmother, (Eyes coldwater blue, yet kind) Warned me about the Blackbirds: “When you see them, run home!” “They never have a good intention.” 2. I wandered the field, looking for them, Wondering what magic they could conjure Could they really change a day, or Even fate my demise, as was rumoured? When I spied one, it was soaring solo 3. “Scavengers!” she hissed.”They work In packs, have lookouts, love my eggs Scare the chickens!” She had a little Fire left, still, reserved for grandpa and The Blackbirds. 4. I ventured further out and yet only The lone Blackbird hovered in the air Wings stretched, undaunted, confident In that animal way, dependent on instinct Distracted by a bee, I didn’t see him drop 5. Instead, I viewed his ascension, from the flat Ground we were both born to, no mountains To assist or impede our growth One hop, then straight up was the only choice. 6. I clearly saw the mouse in his beak, in Some otherworldly stage between life And whatever awaits us all, tail wagging Sadly, with regret, as I imagined regret then: 7. I could have kissed a pretty girl with black hair Like shiny wings, curved around an angel face Instead I asked about her brother, was he still Playing ball at Michigan State? She felled me in one swift cut, walking away. 8. I imagined the bird taking dinner home to his family That too was pure conjecture as he was out of sight Gone on an uplift, he didn’t foretell the death of my Grandpa, although the doctors had, years before Grandma blamed them anyway, and me by association She had spied me watching him, good eyes for 83 9. I grew up and moved away as we do, grandma Grew older and passed when she chose to, at Easter, when the family came to grieve the selling Of the farm no one wanted and my boy stayed Inside while I looked for heirs in the sky 10. I found them sweeping through the Golden Hour So many I lost count, so instead of counting I listened for the wings but didn’t have the capacity To hear what I wanted to hear, a rustle, even Though the very existence of scavengers Depends on silence 11. Rejection becomes something some men get used to Grandpa was decried for years yet retained his sense Of humor, but I wore it like a noose around my neck And she, the black-haired girl, left me again This time, leaving our boy, too, for a man in Wyoming 12. Grandma had advised me against the union, calling Her a “Gold digger,” but I went forward into the deep abyss Created by other leavings “Why leave him, though?” I mused, a redundant question. She had already told me, I was the better parent. Factually true, though I wanted her to be better. 13. I thought of all the times I saw only one blackbird And asked myself why, there had to be others., Judging by the amount of ruined eggs, peaches Felled to the ground with only stemmed leaves and a nearby Pit, harder than a rock, as leftovers 14. Judging also by grandma’s wrath, her insistence that These creatures would be the death of her Yet they lived, side by side, for eighty years, Trying to outsmart one another. 15. “The farm isn’t going to be ours anymore,” I explained to The sky, and, unaccountably, one black bird whooshed by At eye level, and I knew he was their sentry. “Go, tell the others” I said. Debbie Walker-Lass Debbie Walker-Lass is a collage artist, poet, and writer living in Decatur, Georgia. Her work has appeared in journals and magazines including Punk Monk, Haiku Poetry, The Light Ekphrastic, The Ekphrastic Review, Three-Line Poetry, Natural Awakenings, Atlanta, among others. She was recently nominated to appear in the Best Small Fictions anthology by the editors of The Ekphrastic Review. ** The Thrashing Above My thoughts begun brewing, as did the storm up above. It did consider raining down, to mingle with my tears, soon. That greyscale landscape alive in my view as, at once, grey clouds became alive, toiling and twisting around. Stepping down as the reeds did sway around from the wind which whipped my face, and drove those clouds up above. Looking into the pond, there I saw his face, broken, tired, just waiting for the cold slap, and disappointed, I was not. He disintegrated into waves, left me to my own devices, as the fowl's flapping above drove the clouds ever around. Back up the rolling hill path, which twisted around grass like the grey mass overhead which writhed in my mind. Griffin Kennedy Griffin Kennedy is a writer residing in New York who has turned to poetry as an outlet for thoughts and emotions. They have previously been published in the Tones of Citrus literary magazine. ** Only your shadow for company on this road… birds and clouds gather. The Problem with Shadows When you live alone, your shadow soon becomes your companion. The world may scatter shadows all around you. The trunks of trees can mark the hours with shadows that sweep, but do not tick, sound no bells, no calls to prayer, no reminders to start dinner. Clouds can cast shadows like kisses, or make the day so dark that trees lose track of time. But your shadow stays near, knows what you doing, but never criticizes, follows you along an empty road without whimpering. Look! From here you can see again you and your shadow, the whirl of birds as you walk the road towards the shadows growing under clouds. But where were the two of you going, into town for beer, darts and conversation, or headed home for safety from cloud shadows and birds, for a bed and a blanket to pull over your head, tuck your shadow inside? Gary S. Rosin Gary S. Rosin is a Contributing Editor of MacQueen’s Quinterly. His poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Chaos Dive Reunion (Mutabilis Press 2023), Concho River Review, contemporary haibun, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Senior Class: Poems on Aging (Lamar University Literary Press, 2024/2025), Texas Poetry Assignment, The Ekphrastic Review, and elsewhere. Two of his ekphrastic poems appear in Silent Waters, photographs by George Digalakis (Athens, 2017). He has two chapbooks, Standing Inside the Web (Bear House Publishing 1990), and Fire and Shadows (Legal Studies Forum 2008). His poems have nominated for Pushcart Prizes, and for Best of the Net. ** Cloud Shadows "Adult male King Eiders leave their mates partway through nesting and fly off to grow a new set of feathers." Cornell Lab, All About Birds Why didn't the birds fly south? Circling above a winter landscape, they resembled black-winged prayers for the sun to come out on a gloomy day. I might as well have been locked up in The Castle of Otranto trying to remember the minute details that a professor used as inspiration for his early novels class. As the son of the First Prime Minister of England Horace Walpole was no doubt spared death at the hand of his Gothic tyrant, Manfred, a character he'd created to dispel the image of saving the damsel in distress. I, of course wanted to be saved: Matilda stands at the parapet of the castle yearning for Theodore as Isabella informs her she is promised to Frederick. Overhead, in those unreachable heavens, the birds continue to circle. The snow has left a single path that winds down the hill like the rim-shadow of a lonely cloud transformed to the earthly shape of a black adder (Vipera berus) the only venomous snake native to Great Britain. Waiting for the still unravish'd bride of Theodore to take a walk in snow boots. I ask What is loneliness? And why? Can Matilda, like a love-starved artist explain to Isabella that she didn't help Manfred select the heavy metal helmet that falls from a suit of armor and crushes Isabella's husband? Will Isabella understand that Manfred didn't mean to stab Matilda, mistaking her for Isabella? On the darkened pathway that leads to the cemetery of dreams lines of poetry keep slipping into questions of fiction: Why should the Lordship of Otranto pass from the present family whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it? I hadn't gained that much weight, and some birds fly south in the summer looking for a mate: According to Yeats, Every discoloration of the stone, Every accidental crack and dent Seems a water-course or an avalanche, Or lofty slopes where it still snows -- as if the life of printmaking is in the lines coming down, sometimes, like icicles where we stand on a bridge connecting what the heart has never lost. Laurie Newendorp Laurie Newendorp lives and writes in Houston. A graduate of The Creative Writing Program, University of Houston, in poetry, she studied The Castle of Otranto (the first Gothic novel) at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. "Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness" is a line from John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn”; and the Yeats' quote in "Cloud Shadows" is from his "Lapis Lazuli." ** My Shadow Friend You and I monochrome color bleached out on the point of disappearing tall grasses chaotic flurry of questions wings Snow-packed path from a jagged past scattered in trees or to a forested future the horizon Architect of Poetic Landscapes you have drawn us birds images like the walls of Plato’s cave Clouds brewing another storm to shadow land hide the answers no matter how many times we ask Sandi Stromberg Sandi Stromberg lives in Houston, Texas, after many years as a nomad in five countries across two continents. She has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize, twice for Best of the Net, selected as a juried poet in the Houston Poetry Fest eleven times, and her poem, “The Art Asylum” is currently being set to music for the Chinese two-string bowed instrument known as the erhu by Singaporean composer Andrew Ng Ting Shan. ** The Van On a dove-gray today like today a van huffs into an empty lot. Children and their teacher stagger out the back. Birdsong flapping at its loudest cannot mask German shepherd bark. A child plays with a spin toy. A dog salivates, whether for the toy or the boy. Another child looks for a missing shoe in the charcoal snow. After a while, in this Polish grayness, soldiers steel-stuff the teacher and the children into the cargo hold. The ignition unleashes carbon monoxide, re-engineered into the space. Coughing. Silence. Birdsong. The dogs are satisfied. The smoke-gray clouds turn charcoal. Silver shadow casts on the spin toy in the snow. Barbara Krasner Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and a PhD in Holocaust & Genocide Studies from Gratz College. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Chicken Fat (Finishing Line Press, 2017) and Pounding Cobblestone (Kelsay Books, 2018). Her poetry has also appeared or is forthcoming in Cimarron Review, Nimrod, Vine Leaves Literary, Tiferet, and other publications. She lives and teaches in New Jersey. Her website is www.barbarakrasner.com. ** From the Cloud Shadows i Uller, winter-god, cloaked in cold walks in the desert of bare fields snow smooth under cloud shadows wandering alone along the road to dark cypresses forming a ridge like stakes placed in front of a fort of willow copse on the riverbank river water's frozen solid, pearly white, punctured by stray black rocks the only sound is the flaps and caws of the tireless, gyring black ravens Odin's eyes watching him from the sky ii Idun, bringer of spring, approaches with her steadfast walk, shoulders back, from the river swollen with melt water the soft song of season's warming sits on her fecund full red lips smiling as she passes over the land she welcomes the return of sunlight now the brown ground will brighten and green again with renewed growth the black birds call to each other even as they scout for sites to nest spring steps out from winter's shadows Note: In Norse mythology Odin is the god of death and war, Uller is the god of winter and Odin's rival, Idun is the goddess of Spring and the wife of Bragi, the god of poetry. Emily Tee Emily Tee is a poet living in the UK Midlands. She's had recent pieces published in The Ekphrastic Review challenges, Genrepunk Magazine and Roots Zine with other work forthcoming elsewhere. ** In the Shadows The moonlight falling on the fields brought premature day to the world. The birds, caught in its gaze, swooped and cawed as if it was a summer’s afternoon. Was the man out very late or very early? He no longer knew. His pitch-black shadow - his only earthly companion - seemed glued to him, clinging at his bare ankles, tethering him to the ground. The birds would not take him. Not this time. He looked up into the dark-grey clouds etched on light-grey night, their shadows darkening the hedgerows, keeping the creatures hidden. Safe from the birds. Crows? Starlings? Their black bodies glinted in the moonrays as they twisted and turned in their dance, the murmuration forming itself as they gathered above him. Blanking out the light. His shadow was gone. Was he still here on the road? Was he in the clouds with the birds? He felt scratching across his feet, small sharp claws. Startled, he looked down. No feathers, no wings. He glimpsed a blur of fur and a whip of a tail. Too big for a mouse. Above him the birds dived. He scrambled for the hedgerow, disappearing into the undergrowth. The birds soared back to the skies, an eruption of feathers and beaks heading for the heavens. The moon reappeared briefly until the clouds moved and blocked its light again. At the edge of the field the shadowed man in the black coat was extinguished from view. The rats and the voles and the other night creatures held him down. They cloaked him and hid him and dissolved him into the shadows. He was theirs now. The birds won’t get him tonight. Caroline Mohan My name is Caroline Mohan. I am based in Ireland and write sporadically - mostly stories with the occasional poem and mostly in workshops. ** Time to Fly Trees pressgang leaves to be more like wild geese. From the hem of the sky hangs late light from the back of the moon and from the thunderstorm moment from the air it holds comes clouds. Everything still floats. Smells from wet earth trail a path and a walker who’s clothed in a great coat while a skein of wild geese leaves no shadow. They lift and sweep to where they are called away from the cold silence of snow swallowing the music of this country vista to where a rush of crows caws at dawn until a puff of spring gaggles with them again. Time beats with the rhythm of the land. Donna Best Donna Best has published in anthologies, newspapers and journals in USA, UK, Philippines and Australia and broadcast on radio stations, awarded “firsts” for her poetry by an arts festival, as well as a state-wide ekphrasis challenge in Queensland, Australia. ** Runaway I accusatory poplar fingers point at wind-stirred birds that swirl above your head to call you back, cro-ack cro-ack your shadow too short on the bleached, iced lane eyes blinded with snow-freighted hedges ears ringing with the tinkle of icicle-clad forests left far behind… which the field? which the snow? II solitary traveller you are snow-swept wind-tears-wept forsaken in this alien landscape with only a murder of cold birds for sinister company… which the shadow? which the crow? Lizzie Ballagher Ballagher's work has appeared in print and online on both sides of the Atlantic. She lives in the UK, writing a blog at https://lizzieballagherpoetry.wordpress.com/. She enjoys experimenting with formal structures as well as free verse: is particularly interested in how a poem sounds when read aloud. ** Channeling Poe Standing frozen all alone, in a dream I saw her there, upon a tuft of silent snow, the beautiful Annabel fair. The sky was cast in clouds of gray. The circling birds were black as coal. Her eyes they tried to look away, each beast a story to be told. One by one they took their turn, plunged themselves into her heart. She knew the reason for their scorn. She must be punished for her part. The forest trees advanced as one. The timbered walls fenced in her fear. There’s no escape from what was done. The judgment in this case was clear. Her salty tears began to flow. The sober skies let loose their rain. The mighty winter winds did blow, the truth imbedded in her brain. In this dark and dreary place, where evil howls and calls her name, a prison stands encased in ice ... entombed she evermore remains. Kathleen Cali Chicago-born and Midwest raised, Kathleen currently resides at the Jersey Shore. Her poetic interests include formal and modern poetry as well as haiku. Always the student, she enjoys participating in poetry writing workshops and is involved with her local library. Her other interests include reading historical fiction and photography. Kathleen enjoyed a career as a senior auditor and educator and has served as an assistant professor of business following receipt of her MBA. Technical writing and editing were a major part of her profession; now she uses her writing skills to craft poetry. She was honoured to have her haiku published in her local community’s magazine. ** Wings Over Moosehead Midway up a frozen trail I pause, catch my breath, savor nature’s raw beauty-- a thin alabaster glaze encasing a naked stand of gray birch several yards in the distance, brown Maine fields beyond. The northern landscape, scarred by my footprints, hardly visible under scribbled clouds in a gray-blue sky. Overhead, an asylum of loons, their signature cries, carefree flight before they disappear in cumulus, before they sweep across the lake, a haunting call interrupting morning silence, a northeasterly wind scattering intimate phrases as I listen to each syllable of a lover’s whisper. Jim Brosnan A Pushcart nominee, Dr. Jim Brosnan is the author of Long Distance Driving (2024) and Nameless Roads (2019) copies are available [email protected]. His poems have appeared in the Aurorean (US), Crossways LiteraryMagazine (Ireland), Eunoia Review (Singapore), Nine Muses (Wales), Scarlet Leaf Review (Canada), Strand (India), The Madrigal (Ireland), The Wild Word (Germany) and Voices of the Poppies (United Kingdom). He is a full professor at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI. ** reveiled nothing I answer and reality trembles below the surface, waiting, unfound-- each minute is endless, contains centuries of forgetting-- thought grows wings-- a scavenger-- dark, ominous, hidden behind door after door-- even now I can hear voices, air whispering over stones skipping across streams that sing despite all attempts to silence infinity-- who will carry the music of the sky, the trees? who will teach this landscape how to fly? Kerfe Roig A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/ (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/. ** Cloud Shadows I thought I understood geography, how to transcend its distance the shape of its unseen contours, the bend of my imagination. Knowing what it means to belong somewhere, without having a place to land. Elanur Eroglu Williams Elanur Eroglu Williams is a writer and teacher. She lives in New York City with her husband and her dog, Luna. In addition to her work as a teacher, she's an active volunteer in the reproductive health sector and enjoys writing poetry. ** drowning in grayscale undercurrents unbeknownst to me flowed beneath where I followed bold, opaque freshly-painted summers —a time when I didn’t know anything at all-- that eventually faded to highlighter marker consistency and I started to see the dark marks underneath. when you’re in the woods, you can’t see the whole picture, like snowmelt after winter, it’s a slow reveal. I took it as age, the stranglehold of adulthood, some coming-to-age ordeal. glass half full, glass half empty when spring came, I was parched, running on empty. sunrise and sunset kept printing, but eventually I ran out of coloured ink, requiring a reprint. the cone dystrophy of my mind only let me print grayscale —a colour ink production error, resolution unknown for such a massive scale -- these undercurrents, previously just footnotes rewrote the paragraphs I once spoke, and all I’m left with are smudged, questionable notes. as I became part of the picture, I gave up the role of photographer. mild dementia circled above, I barely recognized my own shadow, let alone knowing when I was underwater. going through the motions the road became narrower until it was a path trodden by my emotions. were those trees? I don’t recognize these deep-seated fears. or was I a tree and had wandered away? I drag roots, unpruned, behind me. is this a meandering river or a sky I see? I’ve lost perspective, I’m afraid. I drown when I breathe as I succumb to these undercurrents. I wonder do birds grow roots if they never fly again? Claudia Althoen Rooted in the vibrant cultures of Edmonton, AB, and Minneapolis, MN, Claudia Althoen finds solace and inspiration in the written word. For her, writing is not just a form of expression, but a way to navigate and understand the complexities of the world and the human experience. ** Spell for the Atmosphere For air is alive. For air is full of sprites. For air though black and white feeds leaves and leafless trees bears birds resting wings in trees and birds in flight. For clouds and birds are air’s scribes. Is air finite? It is as high and wide as the mansion of the bird’s mind; It is as wise as feathered folk fantasize. Cloud, sky, dark, light, let wing and wind feathers and flesh and feathery trees caressingly collide. Let mingle and mesh cloud shadows shadow sparrows crows and swallows kestrels and kites. Write your mouths in clouds-- air’s humming hives. Lucie Chou Lucie Chou is an ecopoet hiking and gardening in mainland China. An undergraduate English major, she has work published or forthcoming in Entropy, the Black Earth Institute Blog, Tiny Seed Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Transom, Tofu Ink Arts, Halfway Down the Stairs, and Slant: A Journal of Poetry. A debut collection, Convivial Communiverse, came from Atmosphere Press. In August 2023, she participated in the Tupelo Press 30/30 project, where she fundraised for the indie press by writing one poem each day for a month. In spring 2024, she is doing exchange studies at UC Berkeley, where she explores the gay outdoors and works on a long poem that seeks to queer Erasmus Darwin’s The Botanic Garden. ** Gray Lane The crows speak to me. I am the only one who can hear their pleas. No one else listens but, me. They tell me of a man far away. Let’s call him Eversor. We don’t like him. So I walk down that old gray lane. I can taste ash and iron, and my motives become impaired. There used to be life here, but he took it so he could be more near and dear to the ones he calls lovers, in hills far away. In places dyed in deep color. I still remember when our own sky flashed hot magenta, on those evenings now impossible to engender. I see his mark all round, but I make not a sound. I clutch my forearm, while the crows beg me with their sounds. “Do what must be done,” they say. I see tents standing out of the gray. Wearing false colours, birthed in pits of man, made with idolatrous motivations of creating like the unmoved mover. I see Eversor dancing round and round. His feet breaking the ground. Plastics thrown around resting there on the ground. So I place colour on my underpainting. John Graessle John Graessle is a senior History major studying creative writing at Saint Francis University and is currently working on a variety of short fiction pieces. Apart from his fiction writing, he has submitted work to the Gunard B. Carlson writing contest, and received an Honorable Mention in the History category for the Examine Life Conference. He is also enrolled to study law at Pennsylvania State University. ** A Sleep Away I know this place, it’s over the hill and over the hill and over the hill, a crow flight from here or sometimes less. I remember it well in summer gold of wheat and poppy spangles, all over the hill, a king’s mantle, and I know it in spring green, as green was ever in the beginning and after the end, beneath red-flame fall and burning stubble. I know this place over the hill and over the hill, but it’s winter still and ever there, white etched black and grey. I know it will be there, If I just follow the birds. Jane Dougherty Pushcart Prize nominee, Jane Dougherty’s poetry has appeared in publications including Gleam, Ogham Stone, Ekphrastic Review, Black Bough Poetry and The Storms Journal. Her short stories have been published in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Prairie Fire, Lucent Dreaming among others, and her first adult novel will be published in 2025 by Northodox Press. She lives in southwest France and has published three collections of poetry, thicker than water, birds and other feathers and night horses. ** But Where Will I Hide? I will not murder those chickens and that makes my father mad. So, I shove my warmest clothes in my gym bag, head down the road, ready to make my own rules. I may even start being a vegetarian. I watch the dirty snow squelching under my boots with every step up our sledding hill. Will he know why I left home? I wonder if he’ll come looking for me. He may not even notice I’m gone, with the farm and the house and us kids and no one to help. This hill is easier to climb when I was dragging the sled and not my worries. I stop to catch my breath and turn. I want to look at the farm one last time when I see the cloud of black flying towards me. They will not hurt you, that was just an old movie. They’re just late going south for the winter. I remember that in the movie the people barricaded themselves in a house. If I run away, I have no house to hide in. I cover my head with my arms and run home, just in case the birds turn murderous. Samantha Gorman Samantha Gorman, a lifelong lover of books, lives in Western Pennsylvania. After taking several creative writing classes, she found her voice and had begun the adventure of becoming a writer. She writes poetry, short fiction, and is working on her first novel. ** Intaglio in a world made of paper her mother thinks in monochrome midnight ink spilling over her consuming her she dreams of swallows velvety wings spread wide in feathery softness dragging her into clouds the air is scratch-thin prickling skin with intaglio a rapid tattoo thrumming across a sharp tongue her daughter always needling each sentence clipped each word etched on frailty the metallic taste of friction Kate Young Kate Young lives in England and enjoys writing poetry, painting and playing the guitar, ukulele and mandolin. Her poems have appeared in various webzines, magazines, and chapbooks. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places ofPoetry 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 is due to be published soon. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet. ** The Other Life How to live in a world that doesn’t sing with the infinite variety of colour, its depths, its subtle hues? Here we are, caught in this snow-filled black & white world, bound by the inky striations of hedges and trees, a place, where our own black shadow is no more than an exclamation mark in the void. Here we are, thrown like signposts onto the canvas of life to conjure up a future beyond these fences and borders – the almost tangible dream of another life all this, while walled in by lines and lies, winged omens gathering. Barbara Ponomareff Barbara Ponomareff is a retired child psychotherapist, writer and occasional painter and translator. Her poetry, memoirs and short stories have appeared in a variety of literary magazines and anthologies. She has published two novellas: AMinor Genre and In the Mind’s Eye and is very much drawn to ekphrastic writing. Barbara lives in southern Ontario within walking distance to Lake Ontario. ** A Study in Black and White Who knows where the path leads? In a world of black and white what chance to make subtle changes? Crows, rowdy, raucous, predators, seek prey in an unforgiving landscape. Trees, leafless, spiked. cruel, offer neither rest nor shelter, in a static, vertical cosmos. Where is man's space his shelter, his illusions? Reduced to an infinite smallness, only his shadow's behind him. Ahead only dark trees, nothing to comfort, appease. Sarah Das Gupta Sarah Das Gupta is a teacher from Cambridge who has worked in India and Tanzania. Her work has been published in over twenty countries. ** Bird Shadows I'm being followed by bird shadows ten hundred flocks obscure the sun tremolo coo & hoot floating on the zephyr feather bone & beak slicing the firmament vainly they flee ten hundred fowlers I'm being followed by bird shadows no more no more A threnody to anthropogenic extinction here on Mother Earth due to hunting, loss of habitat & global warming: *Great auk (1844) *Labrador duck (1878) *Passenger pigeon (1900) *Heath hen (1932) *Carolina parakeet (1940) *Ivory-billed woodpecker (1944) *Imperil woodpecker (1956) *Arctic curlew (1980) *Bachman's warbler (1980) *Dusky seaside sparrow (1987) and the list goes on... *two thirds of North America's 604 bird species are currently at risk of extinction (Audubon Science 2023) Donna-Lee Smith Donna-Lee Smith writes at times from an off-grid cabin in Canada where herons, geese, ducks, wood peckers, owls, chickadees, blue jays, finches, humming birds, and their ilk, grace her days. ** grey day… thoughts screech like covens of crows sky-shrieking as they circle cinder clouds their shifting silhouettes flailing and railing against this bitter breeze with its bluster of dead sycamore leaves littering fresh air before the bird-mob free-falls spinning in a feeding-frenzy onto stubbled beds where the crows will grub grasping this winter’s bleakness Dorothy Burrows Dorothy Burrows lives, writes and walks on the edge of The North Wessex Downs where she often encounters crows. Her poems and flash fiction have been published in various journals including The Ekphrastic Review. ** I Am Sanguine Despite these being sketchy times to exist, and yet the warp and weft of land, the unnoticed movement of growth is a constancy of comfort. A pause on a walk home in the loneness of landscape as all comes to pensive rest. The day’s work was not yet done but enough is done for now. Sometimes rest is the only answer. The heart in silence watches knowingly. The technicolour of day turns to silence come dusk, come starry night. Come, evening breeze, let’s walk on. A bracing spring around the edges a hunch-shouldered walk towards the warmth of hearth and home. The stillness of land anchors the swooping of bird nomads the terrestrial steadying the aerial, as a wild kite in strong hands. Good steady land. Good vertical grass, trees and two-leggeds, elements and forces and all upward rising things. Nina Nazir Nina Nazir (she/her) is a British Pakistani poet, artist and avid multi-potentialite based in Birmingham, UK. She's had work published in various journals, including The Ekphrastic Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, Free Verse Revolution, Unlost Journal, Harana Poetry, Visual Verse and Sunday Mornings at the River. You can usually find her writing in her local favourite café or on Instagram: @nina.s.nazir and on X (Twitter): @NusraNazir ** Upon Seeing the Glorious Crepuscular Rays If the end is coming, then I want to saddle up to cloud shadow scattering the etched air gazing upon a field and the pines. Cloud shadow milking the sky white. Wavelength weighing on landscape. They sunbeam overtly and pour into starkness. Cloud shadow folding like a German quilt, stitched brilliant. The grand artist wishing pleasant twilight. Gentleness comes. Whispering wind whirls. If the end is coming, then enchant the Earth until the finish line—a thin, yellow ribbon that unfurls. When the end arrives, no need to forward the mail. Let the narrow footpath weave like a ventricle from the heart to siphon into ground. Sky broken lyrics. Songs scratch the hills. If the dark birds keep circling, then eventually they will caw. They yearn from hunger. They eye creatures below, especially the lonely, lovely one. John Milkereit John Milkereit lives in Houston, Texas working as a mechanical engineer. He has completed a M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. His work has appeared in various literary journals such as The Comstock Review,Panoply, San Pedro River Review, and previous issues of The Ekphrastic Review. In December, Kelsay Books published his fourth collection of poems entitled, Lost Sonnets for My Unvaccinated Lover. ** Seven Years When I was 7, I made a bird feeder out of peanut butter and a pinecone. I hung it on my swing set. When I was 14, I made a birdhouse with nails and wood from my dad’s garage. I hung it on our silver birch tree. When I was 21, I made a nest from cotton balls and torn-up notes. I hung it outside my dorm room window. When I was 28, I harvested organic bird seeds. I scattered them across my lawn. When I was 35, I bought a birdbath. I squared it in the middle of my yard. When I was 42, I woke early to hear the birds sing. I listened like a dog guarding a door. When I was 49, I cried for my birds to fly home. They never did. For they were already home in the sky. Michelle Hoover Michelle Hoover is an aspiring poet, graduate student, bad swimmer, exceptional procrastinator and word lover extraordinaire. Her work can be found on her phone, her friend’s phones, her family’s phones and now presumably on your phone. ** Finding What Speaks to Me I love literature, art, and music so much that I have a hard time choosing between what to buy, what to settle down with for two or three hours at a stretch. But this print obsessed me, partly because I found it tucked in a library book. Free! No name attached, and the book hadn’t been checked out since 1935. I didn’t really need to try to search out an owner. It was mine. “Isn’t it gorgeous?” I asked my roommate. “It’s pretty creepy to me,” she said, “looks like a great illustration for an Edgar Allan Poe story,” she said. (Appropriate since Poe’s dorm room was just a ten-minute walk from mine, though 144 years too late.) “You’ll see how I transform it,” I told her. I took it to a copy center. The art an unlikely choice for me. I don’t relish misty gray days with snow. I’m a Southerner after all. So I bought thirteen cheap black frames, made thirteen copies that I printed on a warm golden wheat background. Yes! Now they looked peaceful and meditative, like Chinese screens. I arranged them four across, three deep, to hang over my bed/reading space. The extra print was in homage to Poe. My roommate agreed the colour change helped. What we didn’t realize was that the birds, ravens to Poe, seagulls to me, would calm my dreams. No more yells for me to wake up from a nightmare. All these years later, they hang in my study, whispering ideas. 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. Please visit her new website at https://www.alariepoet.com |
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