 A Mad Tea Party, by Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald (USA) c. 1934? The Journal of Zelda The devil is the rabbit. And I am the fallen angel to whom he resurrects. I am melting, No! Falling, that’s what it is, I am falling! Yoohoo! Zelds! Tick Tock. I am following the rabbit. Hello Alice! It speaks, I listen, intent. Tick tock. Its eyes are red. His eyes are red, red like the devil’s. Red like my Scottie’s bowtie, the one I bought him in Spain. It was hot that day, hot today too. Hot in this tunnel. Why am I in a tunnel? They put me in the tunnel, that’s what it is. They’re always trying to clip my wings. But the rabbit… the rabbit wants to help me. Dance, Alice! Dance! Dance for us! It is my birthday— no, it isn’t! But is it? I wonder… My feet hurt. Red again. Red. Red. Red. Like rubies. Great glittering rubies scattered amongst the wet earth. And deeply buried in the white fur. In the mirror, too. I spot the mirror, the red. Spot! Spots! I am dizzy. It must be from all the falling. Red is the thermometer they poke under my tongue. Very dizzy… I dream. I am hot again. I might as well lie here to die. His fur is soft. This could be my coffin. I smile. What a pleasant dream. This one makes you larger, but this one makes you small. Very, very small. That’s what I must have done. I’ve taken the one that makes you feel very, very small. I lied to Scottie again. I’m fine (I am small! Help me, I am small again, Scottie!) I am fine, my love, do not wrinkle your brow at me (for God’s sake, get me out of this tunnel, I am burning alive, Scottie!) I do love the way you look when you’re angry (oh, not at me, not again, Scottie, please don’t let them do this to me, I have to dance for him) We shall have dinner at 4 o’clock, that sounds perfectly fine to me, darling (I hope it is the one that makes me big, I am tired, so tired of being this small) I do love that hat, darling where did you get it (is it your birthday again, who bought him that hat I wonder). Tick Tock, Alice! Oh dear, the game was rigged, and I’ve run out of time, I’m afraid. Tick tock. Tawni Bridenball Tawni Bridenball earner her Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Denver. ** The Dance of the Mad Hatter An Alabama belle coasts, dances effortlessly across the floor. Gone is hesitance, any introverted jitters killed. A lieutenant, mesmerized, now offers politely to quench raging sarsaparilla thirst to this uplifting, vivacious whirlwind. Examine: Why? Zelda! Barbara Krasner Barbara Krasner is a New Jersey-based poet of ten collections, including Poems of the Winter Palace (Bottlecap Press, 2025), The Night Watch (Kelsay Books, 2025), Insomnia: Poems after Lee Krasner (Dancing Girl Press, 2026), and the forthcoming The Wanderers (Shanti Arts, 2026), and Memory Collector(Kelsay Books, 2027). Visit her website at www.barbarakrasner.com. ** what linger becomes he last notes of a grateful dead song the jester the joker the candlestick maker lighting candles breathing fire daffodils yellow eyes drying from the inside out flying notes from a blossoming organ keys splayed westward while you look east making madness while fingering cup and teapot in the lazy last days pine and white orchids play in the soil streams do we remember spring and have the parties ended too soon dance with me juggle my love sweep me over green grass high hopes and let the dreams pass hover and wave enough to light the day and darken their eyes only then can we see the morning light mike sluchinski mike sluchinski reads vonnegut's harrison bergeron religiously. he’s grateful to be part of heartwood literary magazine, dublin poetry walk '24 & '26, superfan/dear easy mac, FLARE: flagler review, scifaikuest, tulane review, mantis, failed haiku, inlandia journal, kaleidotrope, eternal haunted summer, the wave (kelp), the literary review of canada, the coachella review, welter, poemeleon, lit shark, proud to be vols. 13 & 14, the ekphrastic review, meow meow pow pow, kelp journal, the fib review, south florida poetry journal (soflopojo), freefall, pulpmag, in parentheses, and more coming! ** Save me a Waltz Weltering around in my lingo like naked legs, a bedrock in sherds, blossoming, for I party daily, seeing that time of abundance, of reck-less, needs prophecies, a dance. Wine maybe. No scarlet shoes or masked bogeyman may faze me. The eat-me cake’s icing looks praisingly promising, honey mustard my fave. We look like castles gathering, on this check-checkered tartan, yet, it is about drinking, till strength less, till rough ready eurythmics, hands stretching. Addressing. This is not just madness, we aware of falling water-week-days, of blackness in strict ditches ahead. Yes, let’s dress up best, and refuse to be bored. Kate Copeland Kate Copeland’s love for languages led her to linguistics, her love for art & water to poetry. She is curator-editor for The Ekphrastic Review, and runs workshops & open-mics for several writing networks. Find her poems @ https://www.instagram.com/kate.copeland.poems/ & TER, WildfireWords, Gleam, Metphrastics, Hedgehog Press [a.o.]; her audio-poetry-book Caterpillar Tracks will go public in autumn, thanks to WildfireWords. ** Pantalone Tea Party Freeze Gunilla and I held mad tea parties amidst rock pools during low tide as seagulls flew overhead, eyes fixed on our fingers that held cookies or bread sticks they’d dive bomb, snatch, then gobble-down eight feet from our wet tablecloth, viewing us as an easy mark for food. Tossing seashells at cautious grey and white sky pirates circling above and taunting below, adjusting flamboyant clothes of silk and cotton we’d kick sand from red leather boots to our long pointed-toed poulaines then uttered dramatic oaths of love and devotion. When high tides rolled in, we threw party plates, cups and cake to the centre of our checkered tablecloth, pulled and tied four corners splashing through pools quoting favorite Lewis Caroll lines from Through the Looking Glass, yet like Zelda Fitzgerald, we left our party unfulfilled. Sterling Warner A Washington-based author, poet, educator, and Pushcart Nominee, Sterling Warner’s works have appeared in such literary magazines, journals, and anthologies The Raven’s Perch, Lothlórien Poetry Journal, Ekphrastic Journal Review, Bewildering Stories, and Verse-Virtual. Warner has written over a dozen volumes of poetry/fiction including Without Wheels, ShadowCat, Edges, Memento Mori, Serpent’s Tooth, Flytraps: Poems, Cracks of Light: Pandemic Poetry & Fiction, Halcyon Days: Collected Fibonacci, Abraxas, Gunills’s, Garden: Poetry, Seaboard Magic (2026)—as well as Masques: Flash Fiction & Short Stories. He currently writes, hosts “virtual” poetry/fiction readings, turns wood, and enjoys fishing and boating along the Hood Canal. ** Tumble Girl At the treeline Of the forest See the dull and Ticking tunnel I will tumble ‘Til I'm trampled Down the chute And up the ladder Rungs on wrongways Ringing singing Rhyming war-songs Marching feet Flags a-wavin' Teapot shaking Clattered vapours Whistle heat The checkerboarded Mad magician Flicks the runner From the table Tumbles dishes Tumble-wishing Make me bigger Make me tall Blooded hearts Melt rivers rising Still the pawns go on Colliding Merely checking Are you near me Are you playing Are you bored? Antling insects Inching upwards After parapeted Picnics Kick the bishop From the rampart Card trick trial Heads a-roll Tapping feet and Ticking timepiece Rushing hurry Hushing wait ‘Til the hearts On all my armies Melt the castle Cats and dishes Wishes magics Garden games, ‘Til the river Soothes me slowly Through shivved shivers Dripped with paint, ‘Til the crystalline White palace Waves me, waves Away, away. Zoe Kelton Zoe Kelton is a writer from the Pacific Northwest. Her work has recently appeared in the 2026 Whatcom Writes Anthology. ** A Mad Tea Party Look how well I hold the pose — pink dress fanned across the cloth like I planned this, like the cups didn't just fly from their saucers mid-sentence, like something gray and many-handed isn't pulling at everything I own. I have always known how to fall beautifully. Ask anyone. He stands at the edge of it — top hat, red boots, ringmaster -- watching the way men watch when they have arranged the weather and called it fate. The trees don't move. The castle holds its red. Behind us, the path goes somewhere I stopped believing in around 1930. What they call madness I call Tuesday, I call the creature that lives in the marriage, in the diagnosis, in the century's long idea of what a woman is for. It has so many hands. I have learned to pose among them. Call it a picnic. Call it a party. I painted it, didn't I? I put myself right in the centre and made it beautiful and signed my name. Lynne Kemen Lynne Kemen is the author of Shoes for Lucy (SCE Press, 2023) and More Than a Handful (Woodland Arts Editions, 2020). Her work has appeared in One Art, The Ekphrastic Review, MacQueen's Quinterly, and elsewhere. She received a 2024 Pushcart Prize nomination and serves as Editor/Interviewer for The Blue Mountain Review. She lives and writes in an 1830s farmhouse in rural Delaware County, New York, where she shares her property with a murder of crows, one of whom she has named Edgar Allen Crow. ** Messed Up Again It’s one a.m., I don’t know where I’ve been. Dorothy said to meet her in Emerald City, but I’ve lost my way. The Tin Man’s heart is broken, and I can't run in my ballet shoes. It’s one am, I’ve drunk too many cups of tea. Did my date drug me? Will I ever be the same? I don’t know where I am, I don’t know where I’ve been. Mother always said, be careful with your drink. Now I’m lost in the Haunted Forest with a crazy dancing cat. I can’t find the Yellow Brick Road or the rabbit hole I fell through. I should have listened to Mother because it’s one a.m. again. I don’t know where I’ve been. I don’t know where I am. Barbara Edler Barbara Edler is a semi-retired college composition instructor who lives in southeast Iowa. She said, "I love to explore my past mistakes and I write to heal my inner pain. Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald's painting A Mad Tea Party reminds me of the many poor decisions I made when I was particularly young and not too discerning." ** Wonderland from A to Z You’ve spilled tea on your pink dress, Alice-Zelda, and your golden ringlets dangle in disarray. Extra cups lie scattered on the blanket, although there are only three other guests, muscular demons lusting to seize you. Especially the Mad Hatter, looming tall and menacing in his red cape and boots. You have to watch out for him. But your eyes roll helplessly back inside your head. After this party you won’t be going home to the white fairyland castle on the western hill or to the gloomy brick castle in the east. After your high life and all your adventures you’re going somewhere else. fire in the asylum sleeping dormouse Ruth Holzer Ruth Holzer is the author of ten chapbooks, most recently, On the Way to Man in Moon Passage (dancing girl press) and Float (Kelsay Books). Her poems have appeared in Blue Unicorn, California Quarterly, Freshwater, POEM, Slant and elsewhere. A multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, she has won the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Prize, the Tanka Splendor Award and the Ito En Art of Haiku Contest Grand Prize. ** … party in the park … they’re parked for their party on the avenue du bois maybe Boulogne maybe another wonderland (somewhere the white rabbit wasn’t invited); red castle versus the white rook a chess well-matched on the chequered mat nearby the mad hatted one all suave and swagger in suited and booted in a mix of Lycra and latex masquerading as master of ceremony black topper that jaunts he flaunts at tilted angle is that an armadillo role playing possum behind the cat fresh from a West Ender a Jellical cat perhaps Munkustrap not Bustopher Jones who’s too busy being upper- class and about town entertaining an Alice in a strawberry sorbet dress of too much tulle and pink ballet shoes who tips tea on her knee which is chai to her chi (which is all Greek to me!) while the cup juggling hare, unaware of the month, reveals himself a fraud dropping the cups on an Alice’s head to the audience of chopsticks’ rapturous applause: it’s a tumultuous picnic party of fairytale folk by any measure mistaken for a farce a treasured midsummer’s day dream Peter R Longden Peter R Longden grew up in Rotherham, South Yorkshire before moving to Coventry in 1981 for a long career working with young people. Now retired, poetry is a significant part of his life, both writing and reading. He is still looking to publish a first chapbook, having had individual poems published by 9th O’Bheal Five Words Competition (2022); two poems published by The Ekphrastic Review in 2024 and April 2026; and two ekphrastic poems in the Wee Sparrow Poetry Press Newsletters in 2024 and 2025. Other poems have been published in local anthologies. Writing poetry began over 25 years ago, recording how to see the world and what makes it the way it is. Peter is married to Sally with two grown-up boys (and a two-year-old granddaughter). ** In This Style No Price "This tea is too hot!" froths the Hare, "But it's given me muscles to spare, And it's added, for free, A petite extra me, In a salmony flapper dress. There!" Poor Alice, beginning to melt, In a dress which is more like a belt, Huge cups on each side, Is remarking, wide-eyed, On the curious cards she's been dealt. "It's clearly a chequerboard world," She ponders, "though vexingly swirled; This yellowy Dormouse, Looks simply enormouse: It's more like a pangolin (curled). "This party's a failure, I feel; There isn't a trace of a meal And I'm certain my neck Is already a wreck; How I wish I'd been left with Tenniel! "The Hare or the Dormouse: now which Should I switch with, commanded to switch? All right, then: the latter. (Don't mention the Hatter; He's out. The poor son-of-a-bitch.)" Ruth S Baker Ruth S Baker has published in a few poetry journals. She has a special love for animals and visual art. ** To Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald Regarding A Mad Tea Party Life became exhausting dance with purity and passion, fullness of creative zeal and emptiness to fashion sacred as a wonderland of paper-thin dimension, water colour artistry becoming intervention edifying troubled soul dividing its attention seeking to be recognized but finding reprehension weary from forlorn embrace mystifying grief with grace. 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. ** Alice at Tea “You are most welcome to join us,” the Hatter said. The table was set, teapot, teacups, and what appeared to be tiny petit fours on a small silver platter. “Thank you,” Alice did a brief curtsey, looking around for others. “How many are you expecting?” “Oh,” said the Hatter. “Maybe some, maybe none.” “Well,” said Alice, “How many did you invite?” The Hatter gave her a haughty sniff, “Why no one, of course!” “But you just now invited me!” “I most certainly did not!” he said, as the two of them sat. “I said you are welcome to attend, but I did not invite you!” Alice was flustered. “But how can you have a tea party if no one is invited?” “I’ll be there,” he huffed. “Isn’t that the important thing?” He sniffed again. “If anyone else cares to attend, it’s up to them!” Alice frowned. “How is it a party if you’re the only one there?” she asked. “That’s a stupid remark,” the Hatter replied, cocking his head in a most officious manner. “Just how many does it take?” “Well,” she said, “I imagine more than just the two of us! I always had at least three.” With that, the Hatter stood abruptly, grasping the edge of the table. “Well, then!” he exclaimed, “this is not a party, after all!” With that he upset the table, and the teapot, teacups, cakes, and Alice went flying. “Oh, dear!” she said, “are you Mad?” Ron Wetherington Ron Wetherington is a retired professor of anthropology. He has published a novel, Kiva (Sunstone Press), and numerous short fiction, prose poems and literary essays. Read some of his work at https://www.rwetheri.com/ ** Through the Blue Dusk (a cento) It was the summer she slid down the bannisters, lived in a blue velvet trunk. A sudden rain fell, passing through like a blurring hand over a wet picture. Masquerading as herself, she made an awful struggle to hang onto the past. Not very long after, the good times had come to an end. One morning, with very little warning, she stood in the skeleton sun, possessed, Then made a long, slow gurgle like water running out of a bathtub. Night lends a majesty to experiences of whirling, raw emotion. Under elms streamed the incognitos, the figurants of current scandals, The taint of hysteria that goes so often with her kind of life. Lost in intricate fragility, She found herself in the magic palace, a resting place for the fine and glittering. Tracy Royce *Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, famous flapper, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and a writer and artist in her own right, died in a fire during what would turn out to be her final institutionalization. This cento is constructed from excerpts of her 1932 novel, Save Me the Waltz (written in part while she was hospitalized); three short stories: “A Couple of Nuts” (Scribner’s Magazine, 1932), “The Girl the Prince Liked” (College Humor, 1930), and “The Original Follies Girl” (College Humor, 1929); her play, Scandalabra (written 1932, produced 1933); and an article, “The Changing Beauty of Park Avenue” (Harper’s Bazaar, 1928). Tracy Royce embraces the strangeness of centos, erasures, and other forms of found poetry. You can read more of her found poetry in Bending Genres, dadakuku, Feral, Villain Era, and of course, The Ekphrastic Review. ** Accepting the Invitation Dear Zelda, I wonder if you remember that charcoal afternoon when soft rain beaded the Packard's windshield as we made our way on back country roads to the tea party where the Mad Hatter served orange marmalade jam on pumpernickel slices with peppermint tea poured from porcelain vessels embossed with portraits of Kings and Queens when the ticking cuckoo clock was as memorable as the lingering tone of a cathedral bell. Did you know that Scott had also been invited? Jim Brosnan A Pushcart nominee, Dr. Jim Brosnan is the author of Long Distance Driving (2024) and Nameless Roads (2019). His poems have appeared in the Aurorean (US) Crossways Literary Magazine (Ireland), Eunoia Review (Singapore), Naugatuck River Review (US), Nine Muses (Wales), Scarlet Leaf Review (Canada), Strand (India), the Madrigal (Ireland),The Wild Word (West Germany), and Voices of the Poppies (UK). He is a professor at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI. ** Quixodyssey The landscape seemed to be sketched on a flat background—smudged, impermanent, unreliable. The more she examined it, the more her perception became muddled, the more she failed at focusing on anything at all. Light wheeled in a spiral, arriving from an invisible source that was down and up at the same time. It felt like being inside a runaway kaleidoscope, An intermittent glitter passed across her eyes, conjuring the complexity of contingency. Everything was broken and yet somehow appeared to be complete. She was supposed to return to the Other World, she knew that, but she could not turn away. She felt herself becoming part of the shifting scenery, ebbing and flowing into what was, for all practical purposes, no longer there. falderal deliriously insane Kerfe Roig Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Her poetry and art have been featured online by Feral, Pure Haiku, Collaborature, The Chaos Section Poetry Project, and The Ekphrastic Review, and published in The Anthropocene Hymnal, and The Polaris Trilogy. Follow her explorations at https://kblog.blog/. ** Untitled Alice is smashed. The clams made her sick. The weeds made her high. The cat was purple. The tea wasn't tea. It was laudanum. And she's about to have a Jabberwocky explode from her belly. She wonders if she shrinks, that it might get smaller too. Though nothing is relative in this place. The Aces are painting the roses dead. The white rabbit represents all the men she'll ever know: running away from somewhere. Alice is seeing double, or is that Tweedledum or Tweedledee? The dog with brush for a tail keeps licking her. She thinks if it erases her legs and stomach, she won't have to deal with the behemoth. Alice hears moaning. Is it hers? She slowly unfurls from all of the sleeps, like the caterpillar's teasing smoke. Groggily, she awakens from slumber: the natural, the opioid, and alcohol induced, to find Lewis Carroll in her bed. Again. Bayveen O'Connell Bayveen O'Connell is an Irish writer of flash fiction, creative non-fiction, academic essays, and news articles. She takes inspiration from art, history, and myth. ** No Ordinary Milliner The invitation read Come to tea! Dress to please! Alice smiled as she remembered the handsome man wearing the black and red suit and top-hat. She sat on a bench under her favourite elm tree. He walked up to her and took her hand; Preciosa, he said, and kissed her hand Ven conmigo al país de las maravillas. He described a wonderland painted in vibrant colours, delicacies and teas served by rabbit butlers and skies that never darken with despair. Alice watched him saunter down the sidewalk; his red boots glinting in the waning sunlight. She held her invitation and followed him into the forest every now and then catching a glimpse of red behind the trees. She found the passage through the knot in the tree, followed it down to paradise. He was waiting for her on a picnic blanket. Bienvenida, Preciosa Alicia, he sang. She felt euphoric, she felt alive, she felt a little wild with glee. All afternoon at that mad, mad tea party they danced, they sang She was Alicia and would never be an ordinary milliner again. Laura Peña Laura Peña is an award winning poet born and raised in Houston, Tx. She holds a BA in English Literature and an MA in Education. . She is a primary bilingual teacher as well as a translator of poetry into Spanish. Laura has been a featured poet at Valley International Poetry Festival, Inprint First Fridays, and Public Poetry. She has been a workshop presenter at VIPF in the Rio Grande Valley, Tx. and People's Literary Festival in Corpus Christi, Tx.. Laura writes ekphrastic poetry and has many pieces published in The Ekphrastic Review. She has also been published in Equinox, Boundless, Synkroniciti, Point Clear Press, Voices, and Four Tulips. ** Dear Zelda, We Accept Your Invitation You were much maligned for having a good time, for dancing, singing, painting despite the travels, the trials of life as the wife of a man struggling to write his way into history while you remained a mystery. Some say you were mad but you were glad to invite us to tea in the garden of your mind among castles in the sky, striding forward in red boots, lounging in pink slippers, posing in pomegranate pumps, welcoming us to your garden on a sunny summer afternoon. Donna Reiss Writer, editor, teacher, bookmaker, and mixed media/paper artist, Donna lives in Greenville, South Carolina, where she is a member of the Greenville Center for Creative Arts, the Guild of American Papercutters, and the Poetry Society of South Carolina. Follow her on Instagram @dreissart ** Dear Zelda Did you, like Alice, yearn for swirls of colour rather than a drone of endless words? When the caterpillar quizzed, who are you, did you say with your bobbed head high—the original flapper or were your cells still buzzing from the shocks and drips, pretending to be two people shutting up the real you like a telescope with drink me bottles and eat me cakes. She is she, and I am I. The endless nights in the hospitals changing you into someone, Ada or Mabel or Dinah, enough left to construct one respectable person who ached to be a prima ballerina, playwright, author who rode on the hoods of taxi cabs who beat an opponent with a tennis racket who slept in a dog kennel who painted the pictures etched in your mind, with dreamy ruby and grassy watercolors, that were misunderstood and you spiraled in Central Park, digging a grave or a tunnel to Wonderland, unearthing solace. Did you, unlike Alice, resign to Cheshire-Cat’s declaration We are all mad here—I’m mad—You’re mad which was the same conclusion your doctors made when you collapsed on the kitchen floor entranced with sand, beaten from the hourglass so Time suspended as it did for the Mad Hatter. Do you know why a raven is like a writing desk? Were your glittering parties out of wine, crumbs in the butter abandoning one spot for the next in the midst of the night? You should have been able to recount your own adventure, what you remembered of the south, then New York, Paris but Alice wisely, naively announced that the past you was a different person there was no reviving. Towards the end, were you on trial with a jurors writing down stupid things on their slates for the world to judge? unimportant—important—unimportant—important the pencil squeaked—sentence then verdict off with your head—what a long sleep you’ve had. They found your slipper, charred black, still smoking. Such a curious dream. 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. ** Clipt Wild girl - Id sin in time: It zips, it zings, it wings - Wisps, shining in pink; Prism glitz - twilight blitz Hiding in crisp silks - bliss. Minx jilts, lilts, singing in Flight, risking jinx. Cliffside, firth swirls - Fizz in ink kiss twirls. Finch hiss: finis Binds girl. Robin White Robin is a lifelong creative: poet, writer, painter, collagist, and mixed media artist. She was born and raised in a small gown in Georgia, USA and can drive on a wet red clay road without going in the ditch. She loves music from gospel to hair metal. Going thrifting and antiquing followed by good food and good company is a perfect day. Her dream is to live on the beach at her favourite place in the world, Jekyll Island, GA. **
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 Utopian Buildings, by Wenzel Hablik (Czechia) 1922 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 Utopian Buildings, by Wenzel Hablik. Deadline is June 5, 2026. You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. The Rules 1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination. 2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way. Scroll down to donate $5CAD (about $3.75 USD). 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY. Send your work to [email protected]. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry. 5.Include HABLIK 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 5, 2026. 9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is. 10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 15. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages! 16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.  Evolution, No. 13, Group VI, by Hilma af Klint (Sweden) 1908 Evolution Hilma, I found your canvas an hour before the deadline, and so this Einstein-Rosen bridge is my last chance… In English your kärlek and ondska become words embedded in “evolution”-- love and evil inside cosmic constraints, the notorious Ouroboros gnawing on his tail. Yet, that’s not the point. I like your faded milky pinks & sepias soothing the conflict of primary colours, and spirals that could lead to a temple of the future, but alas—look at us, headless receivers of dramaturgy. A single tweak of an amino acid in a neuronal protein, and a mouse starts “talking”—coherently, tenderly. Even hums. In the beginning was the Word. What’s to be at the end? Elena Petrova Elina Petrova lived in Ukraine until 2007, where she worked in engineering management. Her debut book was in Russian. In the U.S., she published poetry books Aching Miracle (2015) and Desert Candles (2019), and a contest-winning chapbook A Bird from Ukraine (2026). Her poems appeared in Chicago Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Passages North, North Dakota Quarterly, Texas Review, Porter House Review, Sequestrum, Southwestern American Literature, Another Chicago Magazine, ANTAE, Pedestal, Ocotillo Review, Global City Review, and FreeFall. A short film featuring her poem won Best Cinematic Poetry at the 2023 Miami Chroma Film Festival, www.elinapetrova.com. ** What the Serpent Holds I didn't expect her to be warm. I could have said no — Howard wouldn't have pushed. I didn't. My heart was already at the door. Howard studied ants—slave-makers, fire ants, the architecture of coercion-- but my mentor knew when a student needed a snake. In Portal, Arizona, in a lab that smelled of concrete and control, he handed me a milk snake and said it was time. She came to me in loops and muscle, her pulse finding mine, sinuous, unhurried, warm as something that had always lived in the cup of my hands. I had spent a week lassoing lizards, catch and release, learning that wildness survives being held if you hold it right. She left green everywhere. Laughter. Relief. Disgust. The sublime tipping into the ridiculous the way it does when something true has just occurred. Now I stand before af Klint’s serpent -- that black coil holding the mandala, the wheel of pink and blue and geometry -- and I understand what it means to hold something beautiful without crushing it. She pooped on me as a parting gift, which I choose to call respect. Lynne Kemen Lynne Kemen is the author of Shoes for Lucy (SCE Press, 2023) and More Than a Handful (Woodland Arts Editions, 2020). Her work has appeared in One Art, The Ekphrastic Review, MacQueen's Quinterly, and elsewhere. She received a 2024 Pushcart Prize nomination and serves as Editor/Interviewer for The Blue Mountain Review. She lives and writes in an 1830s farmhouse in rural Delaware County, New York, where she shares her property with a murder of crows, one of whom she has named Edgar Allen Crow. ** Realizing Potential From chemistry, the human form struggles to emerge Reaching back to seeds, and even slithering serpents Winged creatures hover over an ever changing world A circuitous route, step by step, over many millennia In its wake, lie a myriad of intermediate forms of life And still a mystery, whether there was an initial spark The wondrous DNA double spiral, replete with genes That in so many permutations, do identify all species At the heart of the matter, beyond substantive form Is the question, as to whether this is actually the end Who are we to have decided and assumed superiority But A.I may yet have something to say on evolution Flowers nod and wave Content with their destiny As they know their place Howard Osborne Howard Osborne has written poetry and short stories, also a novel and several scripts. With poems published online and in print, he is a published author of a non-fiction reference book and several scientific papers many years ago. He is a UK citizen, retired, with interests in writing, music, and travel. ** Kaleidoscope Stressing, and anxious, kaleidoscope of the mind, confusing ideas. Mind Challenging, confused, mind spinning in different thoughts, imbalanced thinking. Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher has been writing since 2010 and has had many micro-flash fiction stories published as well as haiku poetry. She currently resides on Long Island, New York with her husband Richard and two adorable dogs. ** To Hilma af Klint Regarding Evolution, No. 13, Group VI You came to such abstraction first inspired believing you conversed with those before that you became and those to follow not by name but as the spirit given trust of clay remade from fallen dust as vessel to contain the soul, embracing chaos and its toll, evolving the improved command of more and more to understand in realm to know though not to sense but reason from profound pretense of symmetry to be exposed in worlds conjoined to you disclosed. 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. ** it is all so transient so symmetrical this whole affair of evolution to come to the centre as if by chance the whole world whirls around and around a circle consumed upon itself weary of an endless journey it turns and churns rolls and stretches will the heart ever be drawn whole? can things be certain in the geometry of life? a constant gaze scrutinizes every line mind empties what is consumed how can we breathe the stench of death and keep on living? all treasures hide in the mouth of the serpent yet we are not the same when we grab them our flesh burns to leave traces of pink youthful skin disappearing in a time fleeting expanding limiting of our own divinity Katia Aoun Hage Katia Aoun Hage, Lebanese American multidisciplinary artist and musician, lives in a world where everyone is welcomed, stories are heard, and voices find their places in the fabric of life. Art is an expression of her inner life which guides her creative process by fueling it with dreams, spiritual longing, and a drive to experience the different realities of our world. ** Mystery I dream of new friends. Of wings under my soul and angels guiding me on. Of confused thoughts and men with overgrown moustaches. Of the love of snakes masquerading as allies. Of You, in the days before wisdom. Of squandered heats and those without meaning. Of misplaced memories and unloved flowers. Of life waiting to be acknowledged. Sandy Rochelle Sandy Rochelle -poet, filmmaker, narrator. Grammy and Emmy nominated. Producer and narrator of the Documentary film ARTWATCH. About renowned artist and historian, James Beck. Publications include Dissident Voice, One Art, Verse Virtual, Wild Word, Poetry Super Highway, Haiku Universe, Amethyst Review, and others. ** Utveckling Sun and moon and dark and light, revolving in the common sphere, contend a time, and then unite. The snake of death is far and near; she wheels in a tenebrous coil around the track of life’s frontier. Dark is the soul in human toil, an unhatched egg within a shell where elemental atoms roil, but fledgling wings bear up the cell to still a higher wreath of strife, and there it is content to dwell, learn, go to school, be husband, wife, partake of wondrous things and vain-- the shining dew, the paring knife, the touch of every drop of rain. Fulfill the flower, become the bloom blossoming into another plane; the serpent’s maw’s an anteroom: soul passes, orbits, then returns a yolk again in other womb. Ramya Yandava Ramya Yandava lives in Boston. Her poems have previously appeared or are forthcoming in The Oxonian Review, The Society of Classical Poets, The Classical Outlook, and Merion West. She writes the newsletter Soul-Making at soulmaking.xyz. ** Symposium Pruned scalp or brainpan offsetting trunk tray at whim-- serpent cul-de-sac Ekaterina Dukas Ekaterina Dukas writes poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning. Her poems have often been honoured by The Ekphrastic Review and its challenges. Her collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europa Edizioni, 2021. ** Eve Sews She threads her needle with sinews and veins and embroiders on linen the contents of her heart-- soft, layered secrets and cloudy dreams, thick tears that fall like painted blood. Her creating hands are godlike, whether grasping her cloth or winding a spool. As she lays down shapes and lines her mind is busy with future designs. She stitches a pair of ovaries in the colours of sea and sand, and the feathery womb that nurtured her sons, her beautiful boys now grown into men. But men have no place in her realm today, because embroidery, traditionally, is women’s work. She allows just one faithful friend to draw near-- the serpent that coils around her hoop. (Readers of the myth never stopped to think that the serpent might be female too.) Catherine Reef Catherine Reef's poetry has appeared in several online and print journals. She has published more than forty nonfiction and biographical works on subjects including Sarah Bernhardt, Queen Victoria, and Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. A graduate of Washington State University, Catherine Reef lives and writes in Rochester, New York. ** Ouroboros I leave my body under the sweet gum with the wood thrush's song. My skin remembers your hand upon my back, how blood expanded my heart. My pelvis felt you, all the way to its fallopian spirals. I am made holy within this cathedral of trees, light singing green notes. I grip the mulchy earth, clutch the gum's spiky orb of seed. There is no pain. Vanessa Zimmer-Powell Vanessa Zimmer-Powell's poetry has appeared on the radio and in numerous journals and anthologies. Awards include first place winner of the 2017 and 2016 Houston Poetry Fest ekphrastic competitions, top honours in the 2017, 2019, and 2021 Friendswood Library ekphrastic poetry competitions, honourable mention in the 2023 ReelPoetry film festival, and finalist in the 2024 Mutabilis Press chapbook competition. Her chapbook, Woman Looks into an Eye is published by Dancing Girl Press. ** When You Discover Divine Wisdom, the Essential One-ness of All That Is and Want to Tell the World When your heart is full of the discovery that everything, but EVERYTHING is divine—even you—what do you do if you can’t sing? If you can’t dance? Can’t write it into tomes telling the world about divine wisdom? When you just know it, when it was revealed to you, when you want to share the beauty of your truth: that there is no distinction of class, race, sexual orientation, colour of skins, that all beings: plant, animal, mineral are part of the one divine reality? And that everything we consider "unique," "individual" is nothing more than sacred, divine drops trying to find their way back to the ONE, the ocean, the all? Swedish artist Hilma af Klint actively searched for life’s meaning from a very young age. Her younger sister’s death cut her deeply, and Hilma wanted to understand and reach out into the world of spirit. She explored the mystical, and she and four friends—as a group—began to hold séances and practice automatic writing/drawing. Soon, Hilma dived into Theosophy (theos = God, sophia = wisdom = divine wisdom) and a little later Anthroposophy anthropos = human, sophia (wisdom) = human wisdom. The esoteric teachings of Helena Blavatsky and Rudolf Steiner influenced her artistic expression, and she used her art to explore her spiritual journey. Hilma was convinced that spirit held her hand while she created her otherworldly works, and that her paintings were messages to humanity—if humanity could only decipher them. And wouldn’t you know: just over 100 years later, a significant new theoretical framework suggests that “consciousness is a fundamental field underlying all of reality.” Is it just a coincidence that this theory is being proposed by Professor Maria Strømme (a nanotechnology expert at Uppsala University)? Let spirit guide you In your search For the light Rose Mary Boehm Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels, short stories, eight poetry collections and one chapbook, her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She is a several times Pushcart and Best of Net nominee. All her books are available on Amazon. The new chapbook, The Matter of Words, was published in June 2025, and a new full-length collection has been slated for publishing in 2027. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/ ** What Lies at the Centre of the Universe? 1 We are both too large and too small to fit. Have not even the stars already forgotten us? Our thoughts are like stones skipping across the waves of the void. 2 We have drifted outside the equations. What remains besides the things we will never see? Life passes through us like an unanchored vessel of surging tides. 3 Zero begins and ends in the same place. Why compare nothing with nothing? What can you do with nothing? The snake holds its tail, yearning to reply to what has not yet been asked. Kerfe Roig A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. In both work and life, she tends to ask questions. The work of Hilma af Klint is full of questions. Follow her explorations at https://kblog.blog/. ** There Was a Girl in Class Who Told a Story I don't remember all of it. Just that it was about being young and doing something small and wrong and being caught inside that wrongness. And something in the telling unlocked a door I had forgotten was even a door. I was seven. There was a backyard. A fence we crossed because crossing it was exactly the kind of thing being seven feels compelled to do, not out of malice, just out of that pure animal curiosity that hasn't learned yet what belongs to it and what doesn't. My friends ran when the door opened. I stood there. Not brave. Just already somewhere else inside myself, already folded inward, already rotating around the hot fixed point of having been seen. That is what this painting knows. Not guilt, guilt is a straight line, it walks toward something, confession, consequence. This is the other thing. The circle that doesn't open. The pink interior held inside the black ring, turning, folding back on itself, soft and unresolved. Someone else's grass under my feet. A neighbour's eyes. Summer air that had changed its quality entirely and would not change back. The girl in class just told her story. She didn't know it would open mine. Isaac Marks ** … break every norm … bold primary contrast choice plucked from painter’s pastel palette it’s the beginnings of a juxtaposition where, from sky and earth and night, the original ovoid emerges bounded by temptation’s serpent-- inside Ovid’s metamorphosis is rested beside how Darwin evolved in thought all centered on what might be an egg a symbol of nature mothered by Eileithyia the goddess of birth a heart at the centre a quartered vessel filled to its brim with empathy equality evolution emotion life pods carry the genetics of the future in patches of DNA: nature’s astronauts orbit this globe-- a crystal ball with its predictive messages-- like eavesdroppers on what is to come orchestrating challenging change wings sling their curving dreams angelic in their flourish and poise springing life to the turning world embryonic, fluid yet full-formed expected, yet in birth, breaks every norm Peter R Longden Peter R Longden grew up in Rotherham, South Yorkshire before moving to Coventry in 1981 for a long career working with young people. Now retired, poetry is a significant part of his life, both writing and reading. He is still looking to publish a first chapbook, having had individual poems published by 9th O’Bheal Five Words Competition (2022); two poems published by The Ekphrastic Review in 2024 and April 2026; and three ekphrastic poems in the Wee Sparrow Poetry Press Newsletters in 2024 and 2025. Other poems have been published in local anthologies. Writing poetry began over 25 years ago, recording how to see the world and what makes it the way it is. Peter is married to Sally with two grown-up boys (and a two-year-old granddaughter). ** Perhaps I See More Whimsy Perhaps I see more whimsy than intended in Hilma’s painting. The animal at bottom I take for an impish owl, wings spread, striving for balance. I see a ghoulish figure hovering along the righthand side of a hoop snake. What does the clinging figure at left hold in her other hand? At first, I think it’s a cap. Then, an oval sack with blue lining. The snake outlines a quartered pie chart of cumulous shapes halved. Black square, blue circle, split in two. And those triangles, they point, don’t they? to that black square. Hilma would find me facile, or sacrilegious— unenlightened by messages channeled from her High Masters. Yet I’m invigorated by energy, those wondrous shapes and lines. And colour. I give thanks for that. The ouroboros implies we come full circle and then will ascend. I descend those curlicues for her brilliant egg-shaped gems! Margo Davis Margo Davis loves the interplay of visual art and poetry. A number of her poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, as well as Synkroniciti, Equinox, The Mackinaw and Deep South. Forthcoming poems are to appear in The MacGuffin and Arkansas Review. Originally from Louisiana, she lives in Houston. Her recent collection is Uncoupling. ** My Myth Is Writing Itself I emerge from the serpent’s womb fully formed minus my head which I left within the boundaries of mouth to tail. I float inside these four realms, spending decades in each one; love and all its intricacies from the eros I feel for you bordering on mania to the agape in times of need; from there I move through perfection and symmetry and the constant pressure to appear calm though a storm rages within me; into the chambers of myth making and magic and remembering the sadness I felt when I was told magic wasn’t real; finally finding firm footing in me and what I choose to believe. I will not disappear into old age and frailty. I will devour my own tail in delight constantly evolving into better versions of myself. My body on the outside holds my world in place and my mind and spirit on the inside hold my truths. My soul’s journey through chaos and surviving the everyday things that tried to destroy it is the real magic. Laura Peña Laura Peña is an award-winning poet born and raised in Houston, Texas. She holds a BA in English Literature and an MA in Education. She is a primary bilingual teacher as well as a translator of poetry into Spanish. She has been a featured poet at Valley International Poetry Festival, Inprint First Fridays, and Public Poetry. She has been a workshop presenter at VIPF in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, and People's Literary Festival in Corpus Christi, Texas. She writes ekphrastic poetry and has many pieces published on The Ekphrastic Review. She has also been published in Equinox, Boundless, Synkroniciti, Point Clear Press, Voices, and Four Tulips. ** Temple It can be no surprise that snakes are always present, circling our bodies-- eating the eggs of our stories. So we hold our silences, our silencing. When he came to see my paintings he ate them, one by one, declared them inedible. It is so much easier to walk across an island, and leave brushes, still, in their jars. We see women, voiceless, all the time. What have I learned? To close this circle. No one will see this painting until I die. Then, with that soft click, I pick up a brush, and paint my palms, my belly, my uterus. The flourish of a fallopian tube. Sister, you see it. They asked me to paint a temple, and after one hundred tries, what did my brush lift out of the weave of silence? The place where we pray. The place where we sing the yolks of our songs. Emily Wall Emily Wall’s poems are published across the US and Canada and have been nominated for Pushcart prizes and Best of the Net. She has published six books: Fig, Fist, Flame, Breaking into Air, Liveaboard and Freshly Rooted. She lives in Douglas, Alaska and can be found online at www.emily-wall.com. ** When Privilege, Convention Paid Sense esoteric ironies, as privileged on holydays, an island where remained perhaps, surrounded, social seas, indeed. Vacating scene where most were found, effected through this stranger life, an isolate, connection claim, hid legacy, revealed; declined. Academy, Society, disputing which direction guide; with chime of Sherlock’s Conan Doyle, The Five sought out High Mastership. Mixed séance with conventional-- wherein she found her income stream-- did sister’s spirit haunt her hope, dead, know rejection of her will? In mathematics, botany her roots and route, symbolic search; in vogue, espoused theosophy, but little canvassed then on earth? 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 ** What Does It Look Like? It looks like Ganesha. It looks like Ouroboros. It looks like yin yang and yolks swirling in a centrifuge. It looks like the echoes of a forgotten past shaking hands with a forgotten future. It looks like the neon remnants of my ancestors reaching from the shell of a bitter fruit petrified underground. It looks like radio waves of distortion and loss. It looks like ovaries and testicles. It looks like sacs of angels burning with questions from within. It looks like The Lorax squatting to suck on a hookah. It looks like monks of Sikkim praying in a circle. It looks like star-crossed lovers sizzling in orthogonal dreams. Truth hidden in polygons, revealed in curved pigments of lies. It looks like life. Sowmya Krishnamurthy Sowmya is a writer, artist, and an educator. Her work appears in 3Moon Magazine, The Birdseed, The Hooghly Reviewand more. Her story was once shortlisted for the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize. She likes to brew Kombucha and spends afternoons wondering which reality she lives in. ** The Evolution of S Sometimes Simone saw a sunflower, snapdragon, or safflower. Sometimes she spotted sputtering seeds, shattered shapes of shame. Still, a snake slithered along the sides, serving as security sentinel. On Sunday, Simone spied six silhouettes. Statues? Spirits? Escaping, slipping past the sleeping serpent, springing like Slinkies onto the surface. Stretch. Stretch to be strong, Simone surmised. Smug with spunk, she switched on her transistor. Hiss. Hiss. Hiss. Barbara Krasner Barbara Krasner's ekphrastic work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including The Ekphrastic Review, Main Street Rag, and Flare. Her latest ekphrastic collection is the forthcoming The Wanderers (Shanti Arts, June 2026). She hosts the Ekphrastic Book Club and regrets missing the Hilma af Klint exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 2025. She lives in New Jersey. ** Embroidery Kit DIY Cross Stitch Set No. 13 Ships in ONE business day! Please note: Read listing carefully. This is a KIT. Photograph depicts finished embroidery, but you will receive a KIT!!! Each KIT includes: 1 Pre-printed Evolution Pattern 8 x Color Embroidery Floss 1 Needle 1 Set of Instructions Display Stand: 1 Bulb Garlic 3 Mustaches (White depicted, but color may vary depending upon mustache availability) IMPORTANT: Due to recent changes in postal service shipping policies, KIT no longer includes Serpent Embroidery Hoop!!! I cannot ship snakes anymore, so please don’t ask. In order to complete embroidery, you will need to find your own snake. Detailed Snake Catching Instructions included. Tracy Royce Tracy Royce is a poet and writer with recent work in Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, Heavy Feather Review, Hot Flash Literary, and forthcoming in Best Microfiction (2026). Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions. She lives in Southern California, but you can find her on Bluesky. ** The Vigil I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you. John 14:18 In the bluish haze of dusk when swallows rise from the tree and shadows mirage my wall you come to visit me after long months of despair. Your spirit looks the same as you did in mortal form; but now when I call your name white lilies shimmer in your grasp, wallpaper sags from winter's chill and I begin to understand as vines spiral on the window sill why you've come to comfort me. The moon shows her crescent wing, a sliver of angelic light to which dust and memories cling inspiring us to think of what we had and have yet to share, your breath falls on cold skin and the dark current of my hair as you kiss my forehead making us both glimmer in the glass of a mirror thinly cracked waiting for dawn and my soul to pass. Wendy Howe Wendy Howe is an English teacher who lives in California. Her poetry reflects her interest in myth, women in conflict and history. She has been published in the following journals: The Poetry Salzburg Review, The Interpreter's House, The Orchards Journal, Songs of Eretz, The Peacock Journal, Indelible Magazine, Eye To The Telescope and many others. Her latest work will be forthcoming in the spring issues of The Otherworld Magazine and Flowers Of The Field. ** Divine Order The hem of black seaweed thrown up from the ocean wobbled and warped through my tears and so I couldn’t make out the dark blob that tottered on and off the line—a sick dog, maybe, angling just clear of the surf. No. Something about the shape steadied me, gentled my pace, as though my body had a read a thing my stinging, sleep-addled brain could not. The gentle lapping of the Pacific at dawn felt suddenly ominous for reasons having to do with the form, which tottered up and away from the ocean, before tilting and weaving back toward it. When this happened, electricity shot through my chest. Below that, my sturdy legs began to run. Oh, I understood, oh, child. Alone. Ocean. I’d seen the child the morning we’d arrived: it was a toddler, latched to the hand of a waif in a crocheted bikini on the beach in front of the backpacker hostel. That morning, child had chortled with delight as the young mother pointed out sandpipers and gliding, diving pelicans. With its lavish curls and dark, oblong eyes, it was an apparition of the baby I’d foolishly imagined having with B. The old story: Man, Woman, Child. The natural order of things. Run, was the word that tore through me, churned my legs in the loose sand, cleared my vision so that I could see that the waves were building, each one crashing and fizzing farther up the beach than the last. Closer, I saw that the child had crouched, back to the water, to dig at something in the sand. B hadn’t spoken to me on the overnight bus out of the mountains. The silence had continued the next day, as the road dropped into verdant scenery and softened into sand under the tires of the 24-hour bus. The tang of highly oxygenated sea air permeated the bus and made me want to take his familiar hand and squeeze it for happiness but he’d pulled away. Even on the purple-black sand of the beach, where the vast ocean lapped and murmured an old truth—the story of the land and the sea holding each other in give and take – I was more preoccupied with the crack between the two of us than with whatever bits of the universe might seep in. I did not want to admit that B’s silence had to do with my half-supporting, half-carrying him down from the mountain. It had been his idea to climb that first day at altitude. I’d worried when he bounded ahead. An hour in, he’d slumped against a boulder, delirious with altitude sickness. Instinct threaded my body under his arm, turned me back toward the little guest house, hidden behind the mountain’s flank. The way my skeleton is, the way I know to push through pain, the way energy addles me when I am still: I didn’t choose these traits to make asses out of men. I did fit in the natural order of things. Later, in the little thatch bed under the skylight, B took the steaming tea I’d brought him and snarled at me, saying I had made him climb, made him run. Lying next to his silence that first night at the beach, I hadn’t slept, had gone out to the beach at first light. As I closed in on the child, it plucked what it had been digging at from the sand and turned toward me. I fell into a crouch, gasping, mopping sweat out of my eyes with the corner of my t-shirt. The waves had receded, as if to point out that I was insane. The child—a girl, I could now see—lifted fixed me with a solemn gaze, took me in. She held out her treasure—a sand dollar— and began to speak with the clarity and delight of a being new to her language. It was a tonal language, with rolled r’s and soft clicks. I understood nothing. As she spoke, she lifted my hand and placed the sand dollar inside of it. One at a time, from thumb to pinky, she closed my fingers around the white disc. Nodding at the correctness of this, she clucked, sighed with satisfaction, turned and shambled back to the hostel, the air crackling and whirring with a gentle light in her wake. Zoe Alsop Zoe Alsop is a writer living in Maryland.  A Mad Tea Party, by Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald (USA) c. 1934? Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. The prompt this time is A Mad Tea Party, by Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald. Deadline is May 22, 2026. You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. The Rules 1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination. 2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way. Scroll down to donate $5CAD (about $3.75 USD). 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY. Send your work to [email protected]. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry. 5.Include FITZGERALD 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 22, 2026. 9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is. 10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 15. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages! 16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.  Coffee House Kirkgate Market, Bradford, by Laura Mate (England) 2025  Kae Bohannan Kae Bohannan is a queer mixed-Indigenous fiction writer who hails from a small town just outside of Island County, Washington. Their writing focuses on out-of-genre stories that follow themes of grief and identity, often blending poetic prose with speculative fiction tones. ** The Crime of Writing in the Coffee House The literary life rarely identifies the unapologetic thieves who use the plundered words and almost forgotten meters found in the open grave of the unknown poet. Some keep vigil outside the unlit homes of tortured writers or fill handy notebooks with stories of imagined lives that no one remembers living. And these are claimed as true. Following second or third hand reports, words claim to be transcripts, of the journals of a literary prisoner in solitary confinement who moved the words to the prison of the printed page, the one that was never there. Or the words are recited on open-mic night in a fabled coffee house, closed that singular night when what happened everyone already knows, but forgot, as the writer would rather not read their own words, but what was said about them. The poet's hope was that some reader would carry those second-hand words up to heaven, since we know how poetry inflicts incredible harm — when it was done correctly and leaves a trace of fresh blood on our hands in midnight parking lots. Royal Rhodes Royal Rhodes is a poet whose writing was often conducted in a coffee house in the Village where he lives. Coffee houses in Boston, New York, London, and Vienna have given him treasured memories of finely-brewed coffee and the ensuing conversations with friends. ** Sleeping Bruty “It's just that time has made you different,” they said Given you brutal shoulders and boxy hips Grey rain-stained your concrete remains Smothered the fire inside you, when the economy dipped They said, “It's not because you’re unsightly or absent of architectural flair.” Instead, they cited the times you won awards And entangled Andale in your fresh trimmed hair Like when there were wishing wells and candy shops Frenzied by the fashion of the day When flat tops and coffee spots Were exactly what we needed, all handmade It's difficult now to imagine what they saw at the time Looking through the lens of commercial stakes We should wonder if it’s too late to revitalize Or if this is the way of Brutalism’s' impending fate The windows are now closed, unclean Enshrined displays in metal shielded slats Merchants voted out by the historical committee Packed into cardboard, then cast onto house steps And although you outlasted your prime As a memorial of endurance after the war While we once admired your stiff-lipped foreverness We now want our beauty to be something more But this seems to be our trend, how we depart with our pasts We put to bed what strikes us as mundane We chase tastes and blame divisions of class When, in fact, it was never you, rather it was we who changed Brendan Dawson Brendan Dawson is an American born writer based in Italy. He writes from his observations and experiences while living, working, and traveling abroad. Currently, he is compiling a collection of poetry and short stories from his time in the military and journey as an expat. ** Maggie’s Coffeehouse As the light failed on that last trading day for the coffeehouse at the derelict market he stood just inside the door, keys in hand, ready to shut down and lock up. Something, less than a presence, more of a luminance, faint at that, a flicker just outside the field of vision, a shimmer, the shadow of a flash as though the gossamer of trade passed by, an ectoplasmic puff of hope, the residual trace of a chocolate éclair, its spectral choix pastry, collapsed the vital force that fell from his chest and sank, never to rise again. He turned to survey the empty chairs against the tables and the Laminex of the service counter. In the sheen, he remembered standing with Maggie, hand in hand, smiling into the light of their retirement dream, somehow conceived in the brutal womb of an architectural eyesore. How happy they were, before hope soured during lockdown when the latest book-keeping software could not account for the loss of custom, and his laptop’s antivirus software proved no barrier to the pathogen that took Maggie. Andrew Leggett Andrew Leggett is an Australian author of poetry, fiction, interdisciplinary academic papers, reviews and songs. His three published collections of poetry are Old Time Religion and Other Poems (Interactive Press 1998), Dark Husk of Beauty (Interactive Press 2006) and Losing Touch (Ginninderra Press 2022). His latest book In Dreams and Other Stories was published by Ginninderra Press in 2026. He is an Associate Professor with the James Cook University College of Medicine and Dentistry. ** Haiku even with good bones it required a facelift retirement dreams Elaine Sorrentino Elaine Sorrentino, author of Belly Dancing in a Brown Sweatsuit (Kelsay Books, 2025) has been published in journals such as Quartet Journal, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Gyroscope Review, Sparks of Calliope, Sheila-Na-Gig, Poetry Porch, The Ekphrastic Review, and Haikuniverse. ** Coffee House After you told me it was no longer me and that I should go away somewhere I thought I hope like me you end up somewhere alone forgive me I hate you this is a photo of me just after I left John L. Stanizzi John L. Stanizzi author of 15 collections, including Chants, POND, Feathers & Bones, Entra La Notte.His poems and CNF have appeared in Cortland, Rattle, Prairie Schooner, New York Quarterly, Paterson Literary Review, Potomac Review, Blue Mountain Review. Johnnie is a former New England Poet of the Year, Wesleyan University Etherington Scholar, and has just been inducted as Coventry Connecticut's inaugural Poet Laureate. He taught 26 years at both high school and college levels, and directed theater for 16 years. Johnnie lives with wife Carol, in Coventry, CT. ** Sweet Morning Light Sweet morning light pours in through the large windows, the upholstered interrupting its flow and causing it to pool in soft geometric shapes around the cafe. The sparkling appliances are still waking up, their metallic bodies beginning to gleam in the newly arrived light. In a few moments, when the billowy clouds change positions, the sharp wooden countertop will be seized by the sun's golden fingers. The linoleum, made dingy by years of spilled espresso, over-boiled kettles, and exploding stand mixers, is bathed in soft gray light. Splashes of sunshine bob up and down as the wind ruffles the left tree in front of the window. The thin branches gently scratch against the ribbed, almost clapboard wall at the front of the cafe. The ancient white paint has begun to peel off in the places with the most prevalent branches, falling into small clusters that stick to the bottom of shoes. Tiny clusters of shadow hide under tables, in the crevices between chair legs, in the corners between the wooden beams of the ceiling. In a few minutes, the delicate morning silence will be broken, and no one will notice the pockets of golden light or shy shadows. Molly Klump Molly is a senior at The Gregory School in Tucson, AZ. ** The Local Java Joint Quick, cozy, quiet, clean, a neighbourhood cafe with a familiar vibe and servers who remember you. A regular stop to and from work, an easy place for lunch, a space devoid of the stress of the world. The chain coffee shop opened across the street with a minimum of fanfare, no pomp or circumstance. Slowly, surely, lower prices and speed, convenience, draws customers away, leaving tables empty. Prices are raised to maintain salaries, further driving loyalty away from local comfort into corporate monotony. Size and scale are rarely threatened by Mom and Pop, leaving the impersonal in place of authentic human connection. The chairs sit empty and the tables bare; community has been lost. Brydon Caldwell Brydon is a long time teacher and emerging writer from the western edge of the Canadian Shield. His writing can be found in The Ekphrastic Review and The Fib Review. ** Where Are My Friends? Lucie came to the Coffee House To chat with her friends She was looking forward to seeing them again She hasn’t been there for two months She missed her last get-togethers She was undergoing cancer treatments There is no one at her meeting place You are mistaken Lucie Your friends are all there They are inconsolable and they miss you You can’t see them Lucie You died last night You didn’t survive your cancer Jean Bourque Jean lives in Montreal. These words are dedicated to the memory of his cousin, who passed away a few years ago from cancer. She was 48 years old. ** Four Minutes You have been standing here since the morning Diane hadn't come in, and then the next morning, when her daughter called—the younger one, not the one she always talked about—you simply kept showing up because no one told you not to and the counter needed someone and you were the kind of person the counter welcomed, people come through and speak to you either looking down at the plastic menu card or looking down at their phones, they do not look at you, this is fine, this is the whole arrangement, and there is a window where light arrives in the afternoon at an angle that for approximately four minutes makes the Formica and pastel and vinyl and wood trim look like something that was once loved, and you recall how Diane used to stop mid-sentence whenever the light happened, she'd just…stop…hold her coffee, watch the light, and you never asked her what she was thinking about during those four minutes, you were going to, there was always going to be time, and you understand now that this is what the dead take with them, not the years, not even the days, just the four minutes, the thing you were always about to say but never did, and now you notice the light is coming, so you stop wiping the counter, put down the cloth, and you wait. Renuka Raghavan Renuka Raghavan is the author of three prose and poetry collections. Her most recent is Nothing Resplendent Lives Here (Červená Barva Press, 2022). Her previous work has appeared in Boston Literary Magazine, Bending Genres, The American Journal of Poetry, Blood+Honey, and Mom Egg Review, among many others. A Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions nominee, she lives and writes in California. ** The Things In Thingness Theory objects become discarded objects in a room where nothing moves sun-bleached lines on chairs align with faded table legs shadows sway like moving creatures shaped from steamed foam & espresso baristas voices once reverbed off tiles two shots lovey & cream’s organic dear now unheard in a post pandemic sweep while shadows catch that lost dance in moving light & dwindled hours piled rubbish from tossed masks & takeout cups who can say where any single unused human object will land my father’s kayak & mother’s balls of yarn for sale at Danny’s Deals now I once entered an abandoned Sushi restaurant the bowls & cups for tea or miso soy sauce & sake piled along the bar where silverfish ruled in rice & on a shelf above a corner booth the white for luck Maneki Neko sits its right paw raised to beckon Yvonne Blomer Yvonne Blomer was the 4th poet laureate for the City of Victoria and has published a cycling memoir and six books of poetry, most recently Death of Persephone: A Murder (Caitlin Press). She lives on the territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen) speaking people in Victoria, BC. She has edited three water-focused, eco-poetry anthologies, Sublime: Poems for Vanishing Ice is the latest. ** To Laura Mate Regarding Coffee House Kirkgate Market, Bradford Implicit echoes heard are those in mist of minds that must compose farewells to where so long they shared their silence with delights they dared, or lent their ear and voice to hum as tales evolving, crumb by crumb, became a feast forever hence -- the place for soul that heart could sense as home to faith that being from means owning changes when they come like softened dusk on shadowed wall of eve that will but once befall and leave the gleaming wood to fate as glisten wishful eyes await recalling scent of roasted brew pervading what begins anew, not felt as mourning of demise but dawn, unyielding, of reprise. Portly Bard Prefers to craft with sole intent... of verse becoming complement... ...and by such homage being lent... ideally also compliment. Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise for words but from returning gaze far more aware of fortune art becomes to eyes that fathom heart. ** The Empty World The sunless days linger on. The beauty of the world hidden. Chairs and tables our only landscape. Empty of souls, even the lost ones. Left to make our way alone. Scavenging what is available. Visions of love untenable. Sandy Rochelle Sandy Rochelle is an award winning poet, accomplished actress, filmmaker, and narrator. Publications include, One Art, Dissident Voice, Verse Virtual, Wild Word Impspired, Haiku Universe, Amethyst Review, Poetic Sun, Spillwords Press, Every Day Writer, Indelible, and others. ** Falling for a Meteorologist I look up from wiping tables and I see him. Not walking across the parking lot not in a bird, or a butterfly, or a flower, But a thunderous cloud. Its high green wall moves slowly, showing its might. Not letting out a small drizzle, not a soft breeze or a cool breath or restorative rain But a funnel reaching down. I reach into my pocket and I grab my phone. Not to call the weather station, not to call 911, but to text him a picture. And I can’t help but smile, knowing he’d love what I’ve seen. Kate Speak Kate Speak is a graduate student at Truman State University, and she does her best to find time to write between school and work. ** as the gates yawn open do they wait for us there? well their echoes do, carried along trays, gossip so piping hot the steam billows and seeps into the grout more coffee? someone asks amidst the chatter, an elderly couple mugs clink softly, yes-pleases waterfalling forth, and just like that they're gone a certain kind of quiet lives among the thin veils of dust, between the windowsills and the rafters, where the gray morning above doesn't feel as lonely and when the keeper's bell rings, may the breeze that palms the shoulder, as the doors thrown wide, remind us that the clouds above, are just as kind as the warmth that resides within. Ty Ty is an undergraduate student from Western Washington University, studying for a BA in Creative Writing. All throughout their life, they've harbored a deep appreciation for stories of all forms and genres, especially those that aren't afraid to be odd or experimental. They hope with their writing that others may experience that same spark of emotion that drives them to keep being creative. ** It Used to Be The coffee house sleeps indefinitely, pale blue velvet bistro chairs are stacked, the baristas are not in, customers have gone elsewhere. Shadows grow where light cannot reach. I look through the window at emptiness, can't ignore the shapes, the repetition of squares––a wall of clean beige tiles, nine square panes of a window, the bar's rectangular blue panels-- a void so clean and precise. Rings from coffee mugs are non-existent. Crumbs from the walnut cake are swept away. But I know I was here with cream on my lips, holding your hand, reading a book, licking a tear when you left me. Vanessa Zimmer-Powell Vanessa Zimmer-Powell's poetry has appeared on the radio and in numerous journals and anthologies. Awards include first place winner of the 2017 and 2016 Houston Poetry Fest ekphrastic competitions, top honors in the 2017, 2019, and 2021 Friendswood Library ekphrastic poetry competitions, honorable mention in the 2023 ReelPoetry film festival, and finalist in the 2024 Mutabilis Press chapbook competition. Her chapbook, Woman Looks into an Eye, is published by Dancing Girl Press. Her cine-poems have been shown at Gulf Coast Film Festival, ReelPoetry Film Festival, and the Copenhagen Nature & Culture International Film Festival. Her poem, Hole in the Sky, was part of the 2025 Ars Poetica II Juried Exhibition at the Blowing Rock Art & History Museum. ** The Chrononauting Adventures of the Brontë Sisters found Anne, Charlotte, and Emily at a brutalist café inside Kirkgate Market just before close where they ordered spam fritters with mash and pints of stale beer that smelled of tuberculosis. The women recalled the handsome boy who was visiting his aunt for the summer and how he sat perfectly straight in the pew at St Michael and All Angels until he died suddenly last week. Then talk turned to birds, beautiful books by Bewick, and the latest Swarovski bins, but the splendor of skylarks and geese gave way to cuckoos’ deceit and the lekking and madness of grouse. When Charlotte’s fingers began to thrum her copy of the Leeds Intelligencer, Anne knew that the mood would soon turn political and with a deft hand motioned for the check. As they rose to depart, leaving behind cigarette smoke and modernity, they could not help but wonder what would happen next. Then, in the flipping of an hourglass, the time travellers were gone like swifts on the wing to who knows where. Reader, I followed them. Lara Dolphin A descendant of immigrants, Lara Dolphin lives with her family among the Allegheny Mountains of Central Pennsylvania on the ancestral land of the Susquehannock/Iroquois people. She has written three chapbooks In Search Of The Wondrous Whole, Chronicle Of Lost Moments, and At Last a Valley. She, like countless others, hopes for a world filled with greater peace. ** Decaffeinated Narratives caught in the interior of a process that ends on the horizon at the missing door - an endless exit into fading memories - what else should I expect? And here is Crow again, having his say before sunrise for some strange reason. Is he trying to coax the day to open early? Is there a line of people waiting to get in? I doubt it. Instead I feel crowds at the edges of my weary synapses, cursing at the interruption, turning over, pulling the covers up restlessly, looking for a way to escape time. Kerfe Roig This photo reminded me very much of the atmosphere of most of my dreams. ** Honey I remember the way you tripped down my front steps when we went on our first coffee date all that time ago. I tried not to laugh, but a nervous chuckle dripped from my lips and it felt like the first day of the rest of my life. We walked to the quaint and quiet coffee shop in the town square and sat at the only available table. My chair wobbled and you offered—no, begged to trade me. I refused, teetering and waiting for the balance to shift so that I’d maybe topple over. Surely it was eons ago or maybe in a dream as we sipped coffee from paper cups and made promises we never intended on keeping. They were the nice kind of promises, beautiful lies that felt like kisses down my neck and your hand in mine. Lies you swore you’d never tell. Lies that felt like being tucked into your side on a Sunday morning, rubbing the sleep from my eyes and drowning in your caffeinated compliments. You’re like the teaspoon of honey that I started putting in my coffee. Sure, life’s okay without, but when it’s gone I know something is missing. And maybe that is when I should have known, and maybe I did but I didn’t really know better. I just listened to you talk and heard “you’re special” and forgot the part that screamed “I don’t need you.” A backhanded compliment because you take your coffee black and I sit there superfluous. Just a body to warm your bed and a teaspoon of something sweet that your life is just alright without. And sometimes I wish that I could shout through the void and ask simply, “Do you miss me?” I sometimes sit at coffee shops wondering if somehow, the universe will glitch and I’ll get to watch us walk through the door. I have forgotten the way that happiness looks on my face—it breaks me to see it again. I’ll scald my tongue on hot tea to the point of silence, and I will not warn this past version of myself that I’ve eclipsed with in the quiet of a Sunday morning. I will watch the sun dip in the sky and light up your bright blue eyes. And for a moment, the universe will be as it should. You pitch your voice up as you tell a joke. I laugh. I watch as my chair shifts and I wonder if I fall if you will be there to catch me. I know you won’t be, and that’s okay. I’ve learned how to fall in love, but I can’t seem to fall out of it. I drown in the sound of my naive, sickeningly sweet laughter and I turn to the woman working at the counter. We share a knowing glance. We both know some love is not built to last. We pity me and I hate the way it feels. She puts on another pot of coffee. I sit in the quiet coffee shop and I sip my tea and try to decide whether to drown out or cling to your voice. I disappear into the background of the beige walls and neutral carpet because I’m just a teaspoon of honey. Something sweet but superfluous. I watch the way it drips from your spoon onto the table. You wipe it away quickly, and the mess is gone. Lucy McCormick Lucy McCormick is a current graduate student at Truman State University. She has done editorial work for the Missouri Folklore Society Journal and when she isn't writing, she enjoys stargazing, crocheting, and wishing on dandelions, ladybugs, eyelashes, and fireflies. ** In the Midst of It This is the story of a hiatus, Of silence, Of stillness, Of space, Of a certain signature. The elements in it Stay within their contours: There are no spillages and overlappings About that storyline To dazzle the aspect: In its idiom is constancy, Of every mote and every moment. And, Why should one be bothered About the beginnings and endings of stories? Substance is in the here and now, In the midst of it. G.I. Sheriff Besides a substantial contribution over the years of poems, essays and stories to various literary journals and anthologies, G. I. Sheriff has published two books of poems, The Dew Between The Petals And Other Poems and One Hundred Poems Of Aesthesia. His poetry videos are featured on his YouTube channel @ghalibiqbalsheriff8314. He lives in Bengaluru, India. ** Tell Me What You See Good gravy — an empty coffee shop, closed for the evening. Chairs carefully stacked so the floor can be mopped. The smell of bleach fights with the coffee bean oil, and the bleach is losing. All the sounds and smells of the day are still in the space — you can’t mop those out. My grandfather knew this. He’d point at something — a flower, a bird, something with a Latin name — and I’d be watching his nose instead, the one with no cartilage, moving in ways that noses don’t. He’d scratch it. Whatever he was pointing at, gone. This is how I learned: sideways, catching the wrong thing. Pam and I meet every other Wednesday. Her family, my family, books, politics, heartbreaks, great deals this week on avocados. Bradford keeps its own counsel the same way — working-class, weathered, not making a fuss about what it’s held. Tomorrow the shutter lifts. Fresh coffee, new conversations, old ones continued. Dreams, news, old news. The pots and mugs are washed and waiting. Lynne Kemen Lynne Kemen is the author of Shoes for Lucy (SCE Press, 2023) and More Than a Handful (Woodland Arts Editions, 2020). Her work has appeared in One Art, The Ekphrastic Review, MacQueen's Quinterly, and elsewhere. She received a 2024 Pushcart Prize nomination and serves as Editor/Interviewer for The Blue Mountain Review. She lives in rural Delaware County, New York. ** The Coffee Shop Before returning home to our innocent partners, we’d meet here, greeted by the hiss of the steaming machine and a dim wink of lights. The faded blue chairs, the pink tiled walls showing their age, the wooden tables that wobbled weakly even then, furnished a haven for our secret enjoyment. Wordless with want, we sipped creamy foam and drained cupfuls of sweet darkness. Our place abandoned now, awaiting demolition. Ruth Holzer Ruth Holzer is the author of ten chapbooks, most recently, On the Way to Man in Moon Passage (dancing girl press) and Float (Kelsay Books). Her poems have appeared in Blue Unicorn, California Quarterly, Freshwater, POEM, Slant and elsewhere. A multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, she has won the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Prize, the Tanka Splendor Award and the Ito En Art of Haiku Contest Grand Prize. ** I Am Not Sitting in the Fifth Chair What the hell, you guys. We agreed to sit at that booth with the view of the parking lot and whatnot, and then while I’m taking a leak you sneak over to this table. Oh. Over at the booth, Billy’s legs stuck to the vinyl cushion. Maybe if you covered up those getaway sticks for once they wouldn’t get stuck to stuff, Billy. Just jam a jacket under there and everything’ll be fine. Well, I can tell you one thing, I’m not sitting here. Not in the fifth chair. No way. Check it out. Over at the counter, that guy gumming his pie to death. Within minutes either he’ll dribble the rest down his shirt, or he’ll shovel it in a box to go. Then the five of us can sit at the counter, two on one side and three on the other. What do you mean, “What’s the difference?” Those aren’t chairs at the counter, that’s the difference. Those are stools. Totally different than chairs. Look, I’m not sitting here, period. Because I don’t need no fifth chair problems. See that little family at the four-top in the back? Two kids and done. I bet Ma and Pa knew about the fifth chair. If they’d had a third kid, they’d have signed on for a lifetime of trouble. What’s with the fifth chair? I can’t believe you guys don’t know this stuff. You know who loves to sit in the fifth chair? Ghosts, that’s who. You sit down in the fifth chair, you’re not alone for long. I don’t know why. It’s some kind of pentagram thing or something. I just know those stains may look like ketchup, but they don’t come out in the wash. And it’s not just stains. You sit in the fifth chair, something lingers. All right, fine. You four enjoy your fries. I’m gonna go across the street and get a beer. And if you still don’t believe me, call up Timbo, tell him to come down and join you. Tell him to sit right there. Timbo’s a lonely guy. Maybe he won’t mind a little company. Tracy Royce Tracy Royce is a poet and writer with work appearing or forthcoming in Heavy Feather Review, The Mackinaw, MacQueen’s Quinterly, ONE ART, and Best Microfiction (2026). Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions. She lives in Southern California, but you can find her on Bluesky. ** Leaving it all In glances, in jingles of coins, In folds of tablecloths -- In thoughts of times When these are past. Crafted napkins, water lines, Leaving it all Like a lone palm Tilting A little away From its morning shadow. Abha Das Sarma Abha Das Sarma lives in Bangalore, India. An engineer and management consultant by profession, writing is what makes her happy and fulfilled. Her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Spillwords, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Sparks of Calliope, Trouvaille Review, Blue Heron Review, Poetry X Hunger, here and elsewhere. She has also contributed to several anthologies, Pixie Dust & All Things Magical and Soul Spaces: Poems on Cities, Towns & Villages, among others. ** Urban Renewal Inside, you could not see the brutalist outside already embracing this coffee house and you. Inside, you could just sit, pretend the world outside had paused, and time eddied around you and your friends. Inside, you watched the mall empty as you talked, sighed when it was closing time, cried as you went outside. Inside, only echoes still fill the hollow, wait until the wrecking ball lets the outside in, turns history to rubble. Gary S. Rosin Author's Note: The Kirkgate Shopping Centre (Kirkgate Market) was closed to the public in 2025, and is to be demolished in 2026. “Shoppers sentimental as end of era for historic centre nears,” by Steve Jones (BBC March 2, 2025). https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy9nd3e79no (last visited April 13, 2026) Gary S. Rosin’s work has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and “Best of the Net,” and has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Concho River Review, Friendswood Ekphrastic Poetry Anthology, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Notes of Light and Dark: Southwestern Nocturnes and Aubades (Dos Gatos Press), and elsewhere. He is a Contributing Editor of MacQueen’s Quinterly. He has two chapbooks, Standing Inside the Web (Bear House Publishing, 1990), and Fire and Shadows (Legal Studies Forum, 2008, offprint). ** The Espresso Machine Confesses I stand alone on the counter top like I own this hour of first light-spill, chrome spine and metal ribs hold my breath waiting to be filled with beans, bubbles and heated expressions of my goal. Before footsteps load the room, chairs scrape, cups clink, sugar scatters, voices shout, you’ll proffer your daily offering – a small measured hope of roasted beans, ground fine and tamped flat, which I’ll lock in and swallow. Built for pressure, I know how to move water through resistance and force beans to speak in dark grumbles, rising, like a cobra, to a hiss. You lean on my steam like it’s prayer, a bitter shot that can truly shake and wake you. But I’ve seen your mornings – how you hover half-lit, eyes searching through screens, even as you raise the cup, like you’re waiting for new life to flow. You will press me again tomorrow, regular as rectangular tiles, and I’ll answer as I always do. But listen – my promise is hampered – I can not pull the day from shadow. Helen Freeman Helen Freeman started writing poetry and flash fiction whilst recovering from a car crash in Oman and got hooked. Although she knows that coffee is not the answer to everything, she loves her morning brew. She enjoys trying her hand at some of the challenges presented on The Ekphrastic Review and reading the different interpretations chosen by editors. She currently lives in Edinburgh and her instagram is @chemchemi.hf ** Kirkgate Market Closes I remember when it opened and we met at Athenium for the first time. Young, impressionable, a little lost, and wary of starting something new. I said getting a cat was easier than dating because at the end of the day there was a warm, furry, creature to come home to; not the emptiness of solitary rooms and sad meals cooked for one person. You said “Let’s get a cat and share it.” I thought you were crazy. You insisted. Let’s leave, then, to fill the emptiness! The first ten years were filled with drama, volatility, excitement travel, tears, and traditions started, careers, more travel, the children taking root, growing up alongside the cats. The next ten years were filled with losses, careers ended, new ventures started, moving, children branching out on their own, coming home, leaving again. We would still meet at that coffee house at least once a week to rekindle what we had when we first got those two cats so like us. Let’s leave, then, to fill the emptiness! I admit the next ten years inched by, a slow drip like molasses seeping through a maple tree spigot, my little trees all grown up and firmly planted in their own lives. The cats are long gone too. We’re left here staring at each other across the table in an empty coffee house with nothing more to say and I think we’ve reached the end of our cycle just like this market. Let’s leave, then, to fill the emptiness! Laura Peña Laura Peña is an award winning poet born and raised in Houston, TX. She holds a BA in English Literature and an MA in Education. She is a primary bilingual teacher as well as a translator of poetry into Spanish. Laura has been a featured poet at Valley International Poetry Festival, Inprint First Fridays, and Public Poetry. She has been a workshop presenter at VIPF in the Rio Grande Valley, TXand People's Literary Festival in Corpus Christi, TX. Laura writes ekphrastic poetry and has many pieces published on The Ekphrastic Review. She has also been published in Equinox, Boundless, Synkroniciti, Point Clear Press, and Voices. ** Hopper Could Have Sat Here I wish she were sitting here. The woman in the yellow cloche drinking a cup of Joe. Hopper knew the value of the automat for an extended stay at the table. At midnight or at dawn, with or without someone to share a quip or take a sip to jolt one out of depression. The haze of abandonment sits here. Or is that sun percolating early morning before opening? But where are the baristas bustling in preparation? It looks as though lonely may be served here. Closing time before its time. Lease lost when the cost of coffee is more than elation from writing a poem, searching the phone with head down, or waiting for a lover to arrive on the bus. Will they open? The doors to the blue chairs waiting for customers, offering a swig of lingering for entertainment? Cynthia Dorfman When she saw Laura Mate's Coffee House image, Cynthia Dorfman thought of Edward Hopper's painting of the woman sitting in the automat with a cup of coffee. You might say this is a double ekphrastic poem. Cynthia wrote this piece from Maryland, US. Her latest work appears in the Maryland Bards Poetry Review 2026 anthology. ** Echo I cover this place with attention. Where they laid gravel over the mossy train tracks. Where the burned-out warehouse sprouted into an apartment complex. As Janey and I walk to the cafe, the creaky white morning holds us down. There used to be bells on the door. We would tear into the booths. I liked to yank on your hood and you would choke, then slug me. Beat me. You always hogged the wallside seat. Janey said we were both deranged but if you kicked her under the table, she would pin your arms behind your back. We ate more syrup than a human being is really meant to. Knock ourselves out. We would be nodding, foreheads sticky beside our plates. They close at 12 PM. They would have to kick us out. We paid with ones and big smiles. Now, Janey and I both drink coffee. We split a plate. Her fingertips are cool on my palm. Once, we lived on sugar, like hummingbirds. Food never got the chance to make us taller, lost to the whir of our bouncing legs. We were perpetuum mobiles with secret thumb-sucking hitches. Rattling on the early bus, we spat venom. We laughed as the janitor mopped bloody fights off the linoleum. Unphased, we ate unwrapped cookies out of each others’ pockets. Skinning our knees still made our eyes water. We faced the wall to cry. In the empty gym, we danced our white socks gray. After school, we laid like a tangle of puppies on the rug, resting our heads on piles of cleanish laundry. We used any light but the overhead. We glowed in the brightness of spliffs, of summer Christmas lights, of star showers, midnight streetlamps, little fires set for fun. We introduced hairspray to a match then jumped back, hollering. We fit three teenagers in a bed made for one little kid. At 1 AM, sleep was nowhere to be found. Our ribs were sore from laughing. Our hair got dirty fast, no matter what we tried. Death smiles at teenagers with a cocked head. You act like you’re just getting started. Like you could go any minute. We liked to play in the warehouse. Scale the walls and hang from the rafters. Straddle the beam. You white knuckled every move. You were always the worst with heights. We would drop empty bottles down and watch them explode into glitter. The last time I saw you, you had that misty look all over your skin. Lips and hair suddenly too dark, mouth forced closed. The second to the last time I saw you, you had a misty look in your eyes. Not crying, just far away. Why didn’t you tell me? We always went to the warehouse together. Is that what you were thinking about when you would get so quiet? Who said you have to haunt the place you died? You were always the first one in the room but the last to leave. This morning, I am heavy. My back is sore and I give into the slouch. In the corner of my eye, I see you with your head on the table. You’re facing me, eyes closed. Like your dad did, I think you would have gone bald. Do you still recognize me with this silver beard? Once you make someplace your bed, you’ll be waking up there for the rest of your life. In sleep, we fall through time. Spirits run for cover in the light. Sometimes it takes a second to remember when you are. In the bleary dawn, you could be anywhere. I saw you blinking like this on my bedroom floor, upside down on my pillow I see it now. You’re quizzing me with your eyebrows. In the kitchen, someone drops a plate but it doesn’t shatter. From another table, a man murmurs, “It smells like smoke, not coffee.” At 11:42 PM, Janey and I pay with a card. She agrees to meet me back at the car. I just need to wait a little on the sidewalk for you. From out the dim diner, your spark is glowing. I decide to leave before I have to see you never come out. The real relief comes when the forks are still, but the clinking continues. As I walk away, a bell jingles behind me. Holly Lola Peterson ** Sustenance Haibun Thirsty, hungry, longing for respite, wandering the market, searching. “Are you sure,” you ask, “there’s a place to rest our feet, refresh ourselves?" “Oh, yes,” I assure you, “just around the corner.” We look in every window at empty seats, empty counters, bereft at the loss of that special place where everyone paused...to chat with servers, eat fresh baked pastries, drink fresh brewed coffee. As time takes its toll on the places we cherished, so we must adjust. Donna Reiss Writer, editor, teacher, bookmaker, and mixed media/paper artist, Donna lives in Greenville, South Carolina, where she is a member of the Greenville Center for Creative Arts, the Guild of American Papercutters, and the Poetry Society of South Carolina. Follow her on Instagram @dreissart |
Challenges
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