 Peace, by Marian Spore Bush (USA) 1938 Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrastic! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential poets and short story writers 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 Peace, by Marian Spore Bush. Deadline is July 9, 2021 . You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. The Rules 1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose piece (flash fiction,microfiction, or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination. 2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Helping the editor share the time and expenses involved is very much appreciated. There is an easy button to click below to share a five spot through PayPal or credit card. Thank you. 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.
Send your work to ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry. 5.Include BUSH WRITING CHALLENGE in the subject line. 6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. Do not send it after acceptance or later; it will not be added to your piece. Guest editors may not be familiar with your bio or have access to archives. We are sorry about these technicalities, but have found that following up, requesting, adding, and changing later takes too much time and is very confusing. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight EST, July 9, 2021. 9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is. 10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we will no longer send out sorry notices or yes letters. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. Please note, some selected responses may also be chosen for our newly born podcast, TERcets, with host Brian Salmons. Your submission implies permission should he decide to read yours. If that happens, you will be notified and sent a link to share. Thank you! 14. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send Spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! We send a newsletter zero to two times a month, with hopes of more consistency in the future. It updates you on challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, the podcast, and more. You can cancel at any time, of course, but may find yourself back on the list after another submission. We hope you don't cancel because we like to stay in touch occasionally! 15. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 16. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages! 17. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly. ** WOMEN ARTISTS CONTEST Have you entered our Women Artists Contest? There are not quite two weeks left but you still have time to join us! The ebook below is brimming with prompts from women artists. Submit up to 10 poems or flashes. Guest judge is Alarie Tennille. $10CAD for ebook, $100 first place and two $50 prizes. Details here.
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 All This Glamour, by Derrick Hickman (USA) contemporary Magazine Cover Proof All this glamour Is the title Of this magazine’s Thirteenth issue. There is a bird topped Walking stick With a top hat. Something fancy Showing the Sense of style Inside. Dr. Emory D. Jones ** Fake It ‘Til You Make It: a Haiku Series I. Glamorous pizzazz Great Gatsby-esque walking stick Unneeded, for show II. Taking all your weight Physically, not mentally Your soul is your cross III. Which you hardly bear Crown of thorns hidden behind A jovial grin IV. Since you have it all - All the fame, money, and love - How else should you look? V. Certainly not pinched With the pain of all the loss That you have suffered VI. You put on a smile And twirl your majestic cane And fake revelry Rose Menyon Heflin Rose Menyon Heflin is an emerging poet and artist from Wisconsin who loves nature and travel. She is currently busy cyanotyping, but she enjoys handmade papermaking, photography, mixed media collaging, and screenprinting, as well. Among other venues, her poetry has recently been published or is forthcoming in 50 Haikus, Ariel Chart, Asahi Haikuist Network, Bramble, The Closed Eye Open, The Daily Drunk, Deep South Magazine, Dreich Magazine, Eastern Structures, The Ekphrastic Review, Haikuniverse, The Light Ekphrastic, Littoral Magazine, Please See Me, Plum Tree Tavern, Red Alder Review, Red Eft Review, Sparked Literary Magazine, The Texas Poetry Calendar, Three Line Poetry, Trouvaille Review, Visual Verse, The Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar, and The Writers Club. Her poetry recently won a Merit Award from Arts for All Wisconsin. ** Until the Water Runs Out She stretched her arm up, and tugged at the constrictive sleeve. We were the only two on the tour bus, as the others had gone to see the lighthouse overlooking the Mississippi River. There were too many steps for me to navigate with my cane, and the other lady, I learned, was recovering from breast cancer and just didn’t have the stamina. Her name was Beth. She said that her husband, Bently, wanted for the two of them to come on this trip to Hannibal. But he failed to think through all the situations where she just could not keep up. So she and I sat in the bus while the rest toured the cave and later walked up the cliff to the lighthouse. I didn’t mind sitting out part of the tour, and Beth was a good companion. She told me about the breast cancer…. How they had not given her much hope….. How they had messed up the lymph so that she had to wear the compression sleeve and keep her arm up for drainage. She talked about Bently. They had been teachers, then fell in love. She regaled me with stories of their travels….. of how Bently always got lost, but in doing so he found the most fascinating people and places. Their adventures took them around the world, with strange foods, weird housing, and wild transportation. Sometimes a sudden friendship clicks… kindred spirits….. separated at birth kind of friends. Our conversation never stopped….wandered into intimate confessions and tear-blinding laughter. It was almost jarring to have the group come back to the bus with their chatter and shared photos of the lighthouse and the river and all the flowers lining the steps. Our next stop took us down to the historic district, where we had time to wander and explore the shops and the Twainish homes. Bently wanted to see the Twain museum and homes. Beth and I decided to visit the antique and curio shops. We must have looked a sight: me with my cane and Beth with her arm held high. We passed a coffee shop and at the same instant decided to stop for coffee before exploring any further. The coffee shop was shabby chic, and we settled back into comfy old chairs and put our feet up on the little table in front of us. Our conversation continued as if we had never stopped for a short bus ride. I confided to Beth that taking this trip was difficult for me. I was recently widowed, had developed a hip pain that would probably lead to replacement surgery and had to use a cane. I was determined to not hide at home mourning, but there were times when I wondered if I was sane to make this trip all by myself. For the first time, our conversation paused. Beth finally spoke again, but slowly. She told me how she had about six months to live, how Bently was not taking it well, how he wanted this one more trip together. She confessed that she was pushing Bently to explore on his own….without her….preparing him for the day when she would not be by his side every moment. She paused again. “I can’t imagine not….being,” she whispered. “I’ve lived in this skin for 55 years…..I can’t imagine not being here. I’m not afraid to die, but I fear for Bently not having me to help him not get lost.” As we left the coffee shop, we both noticed at the same time the little woodpecker bobbing up and down into the glass of water. “I used to watch this in science class,” I told her. “I think it was something about evaporation.” Beth agreed. “Bently taught science. He had one of those birds in his classroom.” “Up and down, up and down,” I said. “Until he ran out of water…. And just stopped.” Beth continued. We looked at each other. “That’s me,” she said. “All this glamour….” She waved her good arm around the coffee shop. “And then when the water runs out…. The end.” We both began to cry and sank into the coffee shop. couch. I held her as she sobbed. We fished out hankies, dabbed our eyes, and continued outside. We had more to see, more to say. Three months later, the tour guide sent the group a short note from Bently. Beth had died. He thanked us for being new friends and helping them enjoy the trip. And at the end of the note was a sketch. It was a woodpecker... bobbing….. Diana Newquist Parson Diana Newquist Parson is a retired teacher, who enjoys sleeping late, blogging sporadically at https://glorybug.wordpress.com/, and traveling with her husband. She is mother of one, grandmother of three, and has no living pets. She sometimes walks around, talking to herself as she tries out the sound of words, and she has been published a few times. Diana doesn’t know how to swim, is a mediocre cook, and hates to dust. Otherwise she is fairly normal. ** Bridge Night with Drinking Bird my mother slips into pearls and a cocktail ring those Saturday nights they host bridge my father unwraps a bar of Lava soap and wrestles grease from his hands and arms grass clippings from his legs, pats Old Spice on his neck she dabs Chanel No. 5 onto her wrists, behind her ears a birthday gift from my father and me from the locked case at Perkin’s Drug Store downtown he unfolds card tables, latches new padded folding chairs into place, sets out wooden pencils cards, lined score pads while she pops open a can of mixed nuts, removes a warm cinnamon-blueberry coffee cake from the oven, plugs in the polished silver coffee pot while he fills the ice bucket washes martini and highball glasses, opens a Schlitz she looks in the hallway mirror, parts and paints her lips with coral, applies shadow above her steel blue eyes checks her cerulean seersucker tunic and tan linen pants for wrinkles, her sandals with kitten heels for scuffs, he centres the ashtrays at each table, lights a cigarette, his 12th of the day, places unopened liquor bottles mixers, olives, and limes on the kitchen counter, wet bar for the evening, where earlier she left homemade egg noodles to dry a Glenn Miller album begins to play from the hi-fi console in the living room, the doorbell rings, laughter punctuates the end of preparations except for one—I slide my drinking bird next to a bottle of Jim Beam—tall wooden toy, elegant from its blue top hat to bulbous liquid-filled bottom, gift from a Nebraska cousin during the holiday name-draw who claims he bought it on a trip to Las Vegas I don’t know what we children know of glamour and glitz except there’s something about the erratic laughter of adults deep into morning that comes from repetition, repetition, repetition Dawn Terpstra Dawn Terpstra lives in Iowa where she leads a communications team. Her poetry appears in current and forthcoming publications, including Main Street Rag, Midwest Review, MER VOX, The Night Heron Barks, Briar Cliff Review, Citron Review, San Pedro River Review, SWWIM, and Third Wednesday. Her work was selected as Honorable Mention in the Midwest Review's 2021 Great Midwest Poetry Contest. Her chapbook, Songs from the Summer Kitchen, is forthcoming in September from Finishing Line Press. ** First Impress Striven eyes always settle on the brightest colormetric. Bull to cape sweep. Bird to berry tree. Addict to vice. My advice? Cinch your top hat and dance. Perform a lucky number; sketch and wall scrawl. You are most fabulous childe when giving your all. Joe Amaral Joe Amaral's first poetry collection The Street Medic won the 2018 Palooka Press Chapbook Contest. His writing has appeared in 3Elements Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, New Verse News, Please See Me, Rise Up Review, River Heron Review, The Night Heron Barks and University Professors Press. Joe works 24-hour shifts as a paramedic on the California central coast. You can find him at jadetree.org ** Night in the Gutted House In the gutted house I am folding the laundry. I walk through the brick walls, I don’t live here, but here I am. It all feels calm. The dining room with the chandelier that sways its crystals eerily tinkling ghosts roaming the halls. I can see white geese flying into the room the stone chimney dismantled. Now they are nesting on the leather couch. I can see wedding dresses floating on the ceiling. Long white silk taffeta with pearls, lace veils. I can’t see I reduce my palette to monochrome colours scaffolding supports are built the floorboards have rotted. I sit alone in this house. The piano that starts to play a song. A child in blue shorts and red top. The easel still stands by the window, gesso, cotton canvases, a pine table, a cupboard with acrylics and brushes. Ilona Martonfi Ilona Martonfi is a Montreal poet, editor, curator, advocate and activist. Author of four poetry books, the most recent collection is Salt Bride (Inanna, 2019). Forthcoming, The Tempest (Inanna, 2022). Writes in journals, anthologies, and seven chapbooks. Her poem “Dachau on a Rainy Day” was nominated for the 2018 Pushcart Prize. Founder and Curator of Visual Arts Centre Reading Series and Argo Bookshop Reading Series. QWF 2010 Community Award. ** The Famous Old Poet The librarian will always remember that you once brought her a doughnut and latte. You spilled your very controlled guts on paper – always aware of fashion and the avant-garde, the cutting edge. Oh, yes, you also had a famous wife. You had that famous cane and wore that Moomin hat. They wrote about you. Cartoons of your eccentricities filled the morning papers. You were going to live forever. Curious reader, turn left at the cemetery, then follow the lane to the cottage where he lived. Talking about fame, would you have known? Rose Mary Boehm Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was twice nominated for a Pushcart. Her fourth poetry collection, THE RAIN GIRL, was published by Chaffinch Press in 2020. Want to find out more? https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/ ** Playtime Imagine a sitting room peopled with dolls an attic space filled with toy trains and cars adult places filled with children’s playthings passive playthings out of their time and moved on into a time when even the box with it’s wrappings and writings fails to excite us creating no spark, no glamour, only needy memories in passing as time moves on. Lynn White Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Vagabond Press, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes Journal. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com///www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/ ** Prescribed Burning You were there the first time I died. I felt the silence. The audience shuffled. Glasses chinked, cutting through green smoke. Da screamed in my head, "You’re not worth shit boy." I saw you standing at the bar; square faced, mauve light bounced on raven black hair, radiated from your yellow lizard-skin jacket. Your eyes, smokey quartz, arrowheads slicing through the fug. I fixed your drink before the open-mic started. Purple Rain cocktail; vodka, lemonade over ice, lemon slice, grenadine. The crowd wafted sour beer and musky desperation. Sweat stained my shirt seams. Faces rose to the bartender known only as Wisecrack, "Not so funny now, are you boy?" You stared. I smiled, steadied, felt the earth breathe. When my shift was done, we climbed the stairs to the roof. Sat silent in the night, our backs to the cool, concrete bulkhead. Looked over the white lights of Wichita, to the amber glowing smoke over the Flint Hills. “Nice hat,” you rubbed the suede. Your fingers found furrows, sapphire changed to steel blue. “Best part of the act.” “Next time will be better.” I felt the sting of tears. “Damn smoke. What’s burning anyway?” “You don’t know about the Flint Hills Irish? The last tallgrass prairie? It was a seabed once. Every April the ranchers burn the pastures, makes the grass grow green.” I shook other hills from my head, emerald running to the grey Atlantic, “You a rancher?” You laughed. “My grandmother was Pawnee. It was all Pawnee territory...once” I pictured you astride a skewbald stallion galloping over thin-skinned prairie, red divots lacing blackfire edge. The tallgrass seeds squealed and burst. I have forgotten grey and green. Our lips touched, pressed soft in cola bottle kisses. Engines revved and rumbled. Sirens screeched. Ink waves rolled in faraway seas. Margaret Timoney Margaret Timoney writes from Donegal, on the North West coast of Ireland. ** All This Glamour Long since my ancestor did stop to fly, we lost our wings before one is aware. So I, innate be unconcerned with sky, drink water ceaselessly in stuffy air. Hey boy, you say a flightless bird worthless? No way! In truth how prideful as I am, saved in my stomach full of blood noblesse of Icarus in every fluid dram. Who dreams of unobtainable is fool, although that girl aloof is so breathtaking. Hence you, highly optimistic, stay cool, refrain from such a silly undertaking! Follow my lead and don't move on that daughter. Stay here and let us peck on the mud water... Toshiji Kawagoe Toshiji Kawagoe, Ph.D. is a professor at Future University Hakodate. He lives in Hokkaido, Japan. His poems in ancient Chinese have been published in the anthologies of Chinese poetry and his science fiction short stories in S-F Magazine and Anotherealm. His academic works in economics are also published in many books and academic journals. ** All This Glamour The duckman nods and sips his absinthe, absent of thought, he agrees with the bobbling bulldog who nods and shakes his three-chinned head in yes and no, and in all this ecstasy. All this, a never-ending supply of ephemera swizzled, their layers never truly mixing. Party until. Hell knocks on the door of hell, hell-o? Jello shots shot full of holes, Empty shells roll, hull-o? The duckman ducks and dithers and the cows come home and the bulldog sniffs the floor and nods and disagrees. Martin Hill Ortiz Martin Hill Ortiz is a professor of Pharmacology at the Ponce Health Sciences University in Puerto Rico where he lives, pining for the lost Lenore. A score of his stories have appeared in print and online journals. Author of four mystery thrillers, he is an active member of the Mystery Writers of America. ** The Hand of Fate The Drinking Bird's a scientific marvel as a toy, a heat exhaustion engine we can magically enjoy concealing, for a little while, its fatal tragic flaw -- the friction it will slowly fight to stillness of a draw as all its frantic agitation grinds to graceful halt and shildren wonder what has happened, fearing hidden fault, and some of us are simply thinking sun will have its day and then give in to dark of other stars so far away as glitter left of all the glamour life well lived has been and, by the Hand that holds our fate, will have its dawn again. Portly Bard Old man. Ekphrastic fan. Prefers to craft with sole intent of verse becoming complement... ...and by such homage being lent... ideally also compliment. ** Clearance I rediscovered it in my Father’s wardrobe That cane Behind piles of National Geographic Unworn brogues still in boxes Gloves I gave him at Christmas Elton John massed vinyl His pink souvenir tin. He would often flâneur down Yonge That cane Swivelling in his right palm Looking dapper in attire Dedicated to all this glamour From days when he was young. In my recollection they were inseparable That cane Walking out with my Father From coffee shops to Woody’s Season after season. World famous at Church & Wellesley That cane Father acquired in a junk store In North York or Niagara. Gregarious red handle with blue top hat That cane Synonymous analogous with my late Father. Wish I told him that I loved him even with That cane. That cane … Alun Robert Alun Robert is a prolific creator of lyrical free verse. He has achieved success in poetry competitions across the British Isles and North America. His work has been published by many literary magazines, anthologies and webzines in the UK, Ireland, Belgium, Italy, India, South Africa, Kenya, USA and Canada. Since 2018, he has been part of The Ekphrastic Review community particularly enjoying the fortnightly challenges. He is a member of the Federation of Writers Scotland for whom he was a Featured Writer in 2019. ** All This Glamour Shot glass to her mouth, wet circle on the table. A red creature stares from the wall with garish eyes, phallic if you wanted it to be. All this Glamou hovering over its head, completely expressionless with a Valium stare wrapping the globe a thousand times over. She shifts in her chair, bare skin tearing away from the plastic with a terrible noise. Thirteen tallies. Not the tally-marks of someone waiting to be let out, but the tally-marks of waiting for someone else to come home. The red creature doesn’t care. Caught on the very edge of one swing as it does back-and-forth, it is more annoyed than anything. She places ten dollars on the counter, brings her fingers up to her nose to smell the money-smell. Still on the wall, eyes so empty and so big, like Kandinsky's as he lay in bed, starving to death. Arim Lim Arim Lim is from South Korea, but currently living in the Middle East. She has not (yet) published any poetry, though she enjoys writing and reading it. ** Summer Nights in the ‘90s Bright lights twinkle on the pier in summer season like performers backstage in Vaudeville season dog-fox is out dressed up to the nines beady eyes pierce in a kiss and tell season top hat and (furry) tail, cane in hand Fred and Ginger pairings, when love’s in season girls in thigh high sundresses skyscraper heels man-seeking safaris – shriek it’s hunting season Manhattans, tequilas, dry ice concoctions cocktail-fuelled dares, never out of season giggling, outrageous or teasing flirtatious girlpower confidence in fashion this season Máiréad and her sister-pack ready to burst all this glamour explodes for red carpet season Jill Simpson Jill Simpson lives in Leicestershire, England, where she runs a small business with her husband. For many years she has been writing short stories and poetry and has recently begun sharing her words beyond her family and friends. ** goes the weasel an opulence of twisting complex, intricate, mathematical proofs of base hash, slash, ticker parade tallies counting panoply of nearly missed, catapult driven bites dull beak a weapon thwap through childlike, music box ding slow and steady single notes mingle, become a recognizable tune, speeding up in warning all around the cobbler's bench I’m not good enough the monkey chased the weasel I’m not smart enough the monkey thought twas all in fun I’m not enough POP Dane Lyn Dane Lyn (they/them) is a queer, educator, poet, and glitter enthusiast with an MFA from Lindenwood University. Find them in Southern California with their partner, advocating for disabled rights, constructing blanket forts, caring for their menagerie of teens, snakes, lizards, dogs, rabbits, and cats, and ridding their shoes of beach sand. Dane’s work has been or will be featured in Gnashing Teeth, Silver Rose Magazine, Closed Eye Open, The Dillydoun Review and Nymph Publication. @punkhippypoet is where you will find them on Instagram and Twitter. ** The Memory Prompt The girl with a mop of curly hair left the album on my bedside, can’t place her name but I recognise those eyes, my eyes of flecked hazel. I lift the yellowed pages conjuring the cine-strip-click of image and triangular clips that pool on the pillow, transporting me back in time. I pause at Mr Duck-Head and draw at the long pull of memory frayed as the strands of string I used to clutch with sticky-fingered rub. It is 1956, he is propped on a stand, centre stage as I gaze through layers of glass at his little cherry face, all pop-eyes and ‘come and buy me’ smile topped with a tilted hat propped on a sleek cedar head. My thumbs briefly graze the bedframe as I feel the cool slice of varnish brushed across his cheek. Excitement, nerve-tingling, electric as I opened the box later, placed him on linoleum and watched him wobble-bob to the rhythm of string’s thread. I close the book, no idea of the year, the month, the day, as hours click by drawn by the moon’s pull but the girl is here again her mop of curly brown hair tousled in tears from eyes I recognise, my eyes of flecked hazel not dissimilar to the satin stroke of Mr Duck-Head’s skin. Kate Young Kate Young lives in England and has been passionate about poetry since childhood. She generally writes free verse and loves responding to art through ekphrastic poems. Her poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Nitrogen House, Words for the Wild, Poetry on the Lake, Alchemy Spoon and a Scottish Writers Centre chapbook. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlet A Spark in the Darkness recently won The Baker’s Dozen competition with Hedgehog Press and is due to be published. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet. ** Clues how the body interprets glamour a shiny top hat furs choker a polished cane or is it death of glamour these years in anything as long as it’s clean ticking off the days thirteen a lucky number for some what lies below grass the body buried in loss a neighbour placing a sign no _____s allowed flipping off the simple request not to leave rat poison near the sidewalk where dogs or children curious might put it in their mouths the kind that looks like chocolate and smells tempting what Proo(f) do we have that it’s harmless to humans how the body absorbs harm the beaten newsboy caps my uncles wore to peddle papers in 1907 going into smoky bars and pool halls they being the oldest of nine their daddy pushing a cart of eggs milk the like to make ends meet ends how the body wants meat wants fresh fruit in winter how the children draw eyes and wide grins on the wall bright crayon over lead paint Stephanie Pressman A graphic artist and lifelong poet, Stephanie Pressman earned an MA in English from San Jose State University, taught writing at community college, and is the editor of her small press, Frog on the Moon. She served as co-editor of cæsura and americas review. Her work has appeared in Bridges, The MacGuffin, The Kerf, Sing Heavenly Muse, and Montserrat Review as well as on-line in Newport Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, Red Wolf Editions, The Ekphrastic Review, The Collidescope, and others. Her long poem Lovebirdman appears in an illustrated volume published in June, 2018. ** Speakeasy Martinis shaken not slurred lost count after two gates and a set of stumps struggling with my whirreds I’m putting on my hop tat putting on my tight why tutting on my pails dancing like Freddie Starr and ginger hobnobs all this clamour my sprains binning the hole world is tipsy focus and consecration kneaded another knight in the gutter wood be such bad form The final proof Rob Joynson A writer of poetry for 50 years with no intention of publication. For the last few years as a member of poetry groups in Louth, Lincolnshire, and the instigator of several performance poetry events he has decided to expose his poetry to the critical gaze of the wider world. He published his first collection Of life and love and interludes in 2020 and has been published by The Ekphrastic Review. ** All This Glamour All this glamour goes with the hour and the American Dream decides its new course on Madison Avenue, making friends with admen and executives and hustling secrets through the secretarial pool. All this glamour is all about suburban commutes to Connecticut, a country house and golf on Sundays, fatigue resting on armchairs on weekdays and notified dalliances during lunch hour. All that glamour, going with the hour. And still picture perfect Easter and Thanksgiving portraits, a pale and surreal inversion, with Norman Rockwell on the walls, looking down at his own idealized creations, of storied lives in all their derivative glamour. All that glamour rescued by this practical grammar of coming and going and taking the back door while the children watch The Twilight Zone, disappearing into a more palatable fantasy than the one left to their own devices. All that glamour is nothing but life through the looking glass, print billboards bewildering with big eyes. Consumerism and Capitalism packed in fancy stationery and sold to the highest bidding finger. Eyes on the Prize A New Name on the Rise. All this glamour finally set to tune to "Bye Bye Birdie," like a dead weight on the table, wearing Uncle Sam's hat and bobbing its head upside down. Upside Down Upside Down. Prithvijeet Sinha The writer's name is Prithvijeet Sinha from Lucknow, India. He is a post graduate in MPhil from the University of Lucknow, having launched his writing career by self publishing on the worldwide community Wattpad since 2015 and on his WordPress blog An Awadh Boy's Panorama besides having his works published in several varied publications as Cafe Dissensus, The Medley, Screen Queens, Borderless Journal, Aspiring Writer's Society, Lothlorien, Chamber Magazine, Live Wire, Rhetorica Quarterly, and in the children's anthology Nursery Rhymes and Children's Poetry From Around the World ( AuthorsPress, February 2021), also awaited in the upcoming 2022 anthology Pixie Dust and All Things Magical, Dreich Magazine, among others. ** The Pink Gold The bangle that adorned your hand Through the years Of your becoming a great grandmother Against the caretaker's white and red, a mere symbol Of marriage and youth, glittered Enticing me each visit more vivid than the earlier. My gaze would trace the bangle on your hand Then stutter up the face As in despair you would say that I may not come again. On each goodbye meant to be the final Like the count of five with a crossing out after I knew soon I will be this face, yet like before we waived. Until the lines turned deeper, the crevices sank And the bangle too changed. It melted into a blob of pink gold, a home to diamonds From a glamour shelf, now adorning another hand. Abha Das Sarma An engineer and management consultant by profession, I enjoy writing the most. Besides having a blog of over 200 poems (http://dassarmafamily.blogspot.com), my poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Spillwords, Verse-Virtual, Sparks of Calliope, here and elsewhere. Having spent my growing up years in small towns of northern India, I currently live in Bengaluru. **  Don't Forget!!!!
The Women Artists contest deadline is approaching on July 7, 2021. Sixty art prompts by women to choose from, and up to ten entries. Ebook/entry $10, cash prize to winner $100. Poetry and flash fiction! Our special guest judge is Alarie Tennille. Details, rules, here.  Us, by Ismael Nery (Brazil) 1926 Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrastic! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential poets and short story writers 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 Us, by Ismael Nery. Deadline is June 25, 2021 . You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. The Rules 1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose piece (flash fiction,microfiction, 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. 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A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. Please note, some selected responses may also be chosen for our newly born podcast, TERcets, with host Brian Salmons. Your submission implies permission should he decide to read yours. If that happens, you will be notified and sent a link to share. Thank you! 14. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send Spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! We send a newsletter zero to two times a month, with hopes of more consistency in the future. 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Your ebook purchases have been an incredible support to the maintenance and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. Thank you.
 Hylas and the Nymphs, by John William Waterhouse (England) 1896 Hylas and the Nymphs Our little eleventh-grade clique was something of a phenomenon at our high school. Probably had at least something to do with beating the odds and having seven carrot tops in the same grade. We’d coordinate our outfits and hair every morning, and discuss activities—like when to go for practice swims at the community pool, whose musty smell always seemed to prevail over chlorine. We’d rehearse what to say when Hy showed up for lifeguard duty, because, let’s face it, Hy was a god. You’ll probably guess this all happened way before #metoo and PC-ness when I tell you we delighted in calling ourselves the nymphettes. One day, we skipped French class and walked down to the five-and-dime to buy seven barrettes with fake carnations—five yellow and two white—to clip onto our copper-coloured hair. We’d already saved up our allowances to buy the most revealing tank suits you could find at Sears—which wasn’t saying much—so we bought a size too small to emphasize our pale, burgeoning bodies. On that gloomy Friday afternoon, we went to the rec centre close to closing time, so we’d be the only swimmers. We strutted past the lifeguard chair on our way to the water, vying to capture Hy's gaze, but of course he ignored us. Even when Daphne eyed the bump in his Speedo and said, “You look good in purple, Hy,” he kept his attention on his beefcake magazine. As we slipped into the water, Cleo slapped Daphne’s rear. “It’s so obvious he’s a homo.” Daphne flipped a blaze of orange hair over her shoulder. “Do I look like I care? He’s still a hunk.” We were splashing around and giggling, when Mae went in for the kill. “Oh no!” she said, trying to sound all bougie, removing the string of plastic beads from around her neck, “I’m still wearing my pearls. Hy won’t you be a sweetie and hold onto these for me?” Hy sighed, but obligingly knelt down poolside to receive Mae’s plainly fake offering. Taking advantage of his momentary imbalance, Mel reached up to stroke his muscular forearm, then yanked him forward into the pool where he landed with a great plunk and splash. The seven of us crowded over and around him, shrieking in delight. We swarmed and thrashed like a school of orange and white giant Koi at feeding time, kicking each other and sending up geysers of moss-green water. Now that we’d trapped him, we whispered to one another what we wanted to do with him. Pull down his trunks! You hold him, I’ll kiss him! Where’d he go, though? As abruptly as we’d begun our shenanigans, we halted, a hush descending over the dank pool like dusk and we backed away from each other until we formed a ring and the water settled. Mae began to whimper and Daphne slit her eyes. “Too late to clutch at your pearls, missy.” We all stared into the murk, some of us holding our breaths, until we made out Hy’s rippling, half-submerged form. At first there was astonishment, even triumph on our faces, as if we’d discovered new power in mortality and we circled in closer, contemplating his beauty until reality summoned us toward the inevitable. Kathryn Silver-Hajo Kathryn Silver-Hajo studied with Pamela Painter and others in the MFA program in Creative Writing at Emerson College. Recently, she’s worked with Meg Pokrass and Kathryn Kulpa in their Microfiction Masterclass as well as Hester Kaplan and Ann Hood in their prompt-based writing workshops. Pre-pandemic she worked with Andre Dubus III at Writers in Paradise at Eckerd College, and with Ann Hood and Stewart O’Nan at the Spannocchia Writers Workshop in Tuscany on her novel, Roots of The Banyan Tree. Kathryn's stories and poems have appeared in Boston Literary Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine, The New Verse News, and Rusted Radishes: Beirut Literary and Art Journal. They may be found on her website: www.kathrynsilverhajo.com/ Reaching and Reaching: a Tanka Sequence I. Reaching and reaching Fingers searching desperately Grasping only air In need of something to hold Reaching out to find nothing II. Emptiness dancing A slow waltz throughout your mind A spin and a twirl Hard feet on tender neurons Your wallflower thoughts racing III. So very haunted Deceptively pretty dreams Lure you to nightmares Happiness turns bitter fast And love morphs into hatred IV. Unable to wake Frantically you toss and turn Utterly bereft So desperate to make it stop Living your truth in your sleep V. Truth you loathe to face But cosmic retribution WIll be done somehow Powers of the universe Laugh at your unconscious form VI. Writhing as in pain Seeking relief and solace Outward dance matching Needy internal rhythm As you seek one last escape VII. Reaching and reaching But never, ever touching Such a cross to bear Yours in both dream and real life How do you carry that load? VIII. With step after step You grow increasingly weak While your outstretched hands Long for touch that does not come Your lonely fingertips ache IX. Finally waking Drenched in a fine sheen of sweat Shaking with horror You go from a dark nightmare To soulless reality X. With eyes wide open Breathing and heart rate slowing You rest, unmoving As the real suffering starts And misery becomes you XI. Time is running out Coming faster each second But you are frozen Sick down to your very core With a deadly miasma XII. This phantom illness Is immune to all treatments No voodoo potions No scientific breakthroughs And no snake oil cures will help XIII. Reaching and reaching Out into the great abyss That was once your soul Perpetually searching For something just out of reach Rose Menyon Heflin Rose Menyon Heflin is an emerging poet and artist from Wisconsin who loves nature and travel. She is currently busy cyanotyping, but she enjoys handmade papermaking, photography, mixed media collaging, and screenprinting, as well. Among other venues, her poetry has recently been published or is forthcoming in 50 Haikus, Ariel Chart, Asahi Haikuist Network, Bramble, The Closed Eye Open, The Daily Drunk, Deep South Magazine, Dreich Magazine, Eastern Structures, The Ekphrastic Review, Haikuniverse, The Light Ekphrastic, Littoral Magazine, Please See Me, Plum Tree Tavern, Red Alder Review, Red Eft Review, Sparked Literary Magazine, The Texas Poetry Calendar, Three Line Poetry, Trouvaille Review, Visual Verse, The Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar, and The Writers Club. ** Resurrection Hylas must return to reveal the truth or they will assume him Being captured by a magical force, as people paint his tale clandestine With the Naiads, sinister, bare-bodied, enticing him, emerging from underwater, Rising over the carpet of nymphaeaceae, a dark, lush forest behind, Inviting him to an underworld of lust, his maternal kin. Pale, porcelain-skinned, ghostly nymphs, but youthful and alike- all sisters, And he, a passive, powerless, enchanted young man, being held by his wrist, Tugged on his tunic by them, like young children often cajole the older siblings into Submission of their childish stubbornness. His face in the shadows, emotions obscure, but the Naiads painted gazing upwards to him, Invitingly, and Hylas bent down, His pitcher remained hidden, his intentions unpainted as the sky. Menodice must’ve been denied of her right over him, for He left with Heracles after he killed Theiodamas. He must’ve abhorred His father. His cousins welcomed him to a home he knew he belonged, Never abducting him. Reassuring, he was one of them. Validating his love for Heracles, prodding him to embrace his true self, to do away with Charades, how Shiva embraces Shakti as a part of his own in another part of the world Beyond. They didn’t seek a lock of his hair. He must return to testify against His own biological kind in a world where Modern women tired of fighting the Madonna-whore binary, and of Denying masculinist notions of malevolent, bewitching nymphs, will continually Attempt at erasing his portrait from the public exhibits. Hylas must resurrect and unveil his odyssey under the turquoise expanse, The depths where innocent women were branded fiendish, Which men now dread to cross. Roopam Mishra Ms. Roopam Mishra lives in Lucknow, India. She is a Research Scholar at the Department of English & Modern European Languages, University of Lucknow. She writes in Hindi, and in English. Her works have appeared in an anthology Earth Fire Water Wind: Anthology of Poems, and in magazines, and journals like Confluence Magazine, Setu, Aspiring Writers’ Society e-zine, Rusty Truck, Café Dissensus, Literary Yard, The Quiver Review, Borderless Journal, Hastaksher, Sahityiki, Rhetorica Quarterly, etc. ** Still Waters Hylas approaches the pond, Fascinated by dark eyes gleaming, Arm extending to select one, His ears full of melody, The pulse of pleasure mounting within him, His empty pitcher forgotten. Seven nymphs scrum around him, Each one a copy of the other, Tangled tresses long and shining, Their onyx eyes upon him, Languid motions calming marshy water, Smoothing leaves upon the surface. Fair Nymph strokes his strong brown arm, Her hair adorned with pale pink flowers, Her eyes beseeching him to join, Fingers curling elbow round, Her budding bosom warming in the sun, A corpse beneath the lilies fair. Lifting his brush, John steps back, His eyes grim in the studio light, His beard bouffant upon his chest, While a pale dark-eyed beauty, Open laudanum bottle beside her, Lies silent on the couch behind. V.J. Hamilton Short fiction by V.J. Hamilton has been published in The Penmen Review, The First Line, and The Antigonish Review, among others. Her fiction has been anthologized twice and she has won the EVENT Speculative Fiction prize. She lives and works in Toronto. ** Hey Hylas, Where'd You Go Do you drown or just disappear When the seven sisters rise from the pond? Fingers gripping arm and elbow Others pulling on his cloak. Pallid skin, like grave wax. Surely their touch cannot be warm and, There is no joy in those faces, These seven petable sharks, Their dead eyes unblinking, Hypnotic and cold with A hunger that drives. And now he leans forward The flask that was to be filled Forgotten in this left hand. Will Hercules miss him? Michael Kleiza Michael Kleiza has new poems appearing in the Winter 2021 issue of Anthropology and Humanism. He has been published in Sledgehammer, Another Chicago Magazine, Rat's Ass Review and FrogPond. He is an alumnus of the Wired Writing Program at the Banff School for Arts and the Page as Tapestry Conference given by Tupelo Press. He is a technical writer by trade and has a degree in physics. He is also the editor of the Rhapsody Anthology out of Guelph. His first book of poetry is entitled A Poet on the Moon (Vocamus 2015). ** The Viewing of the Naiads They leave seven sets of muddy footprints on the museum’s marble floor. Wring the pond water from their long, grey hair into the potted ferns. Nymph 3, untamed after all of these centuries, punches out the canvas of the lone Cézanne, trails the others clutching her treasure, the gilt frame. A few museum-goers surreptitiously take photographs of the nude seniors, then quickly delete them when Nymph 1, the eldest, makes an obscene gesture. People gather to view, discuss. The women must be a live art installation, a commentary on society’s obsession with youth and beauty. For the naiads have neither anymore. Yet they wear their crumpled skin grandly as they creak through the museum, oblivious as the A/C kicks on, raising goosebumps across their withered legs and flattened breasts. A young woman stares, titters. A security guard moves forward to block their progress. Nymph 7, the baby, snarls and freshwater snails pour from her lips. With one glare she turns the two to stone. The museum crowd stampedes in Italian leather sandals for the exits, while the small army of naiads marches on. In a roped-off room painted burnt sienna, the ancient women find their famous portrait. They crowd around it, chattering excitedly, stroking it with still damp hands. The nymphs, who long ago taunted one another with the many Latin synonyms for ugly, admire their alabaster torsos rising enticingly from the water, and their faces, as perfect as any stamped on a coin, framed with yards of copper hair. Only Nymph 4 stares not at the identical temptresses, but at the dark-haired man kneeling down to her younger self. She sees again the yellow flower he tucked behind her ear, feels the warmth of his bronzed arms as she tugged him toward her. The painting captures the moment right before his desire turned to surprise as she dragged him under the water, devouring his mouth with her ravenous kisses. For one glorious moment, the stranger was hers alone. Then the others tore at him until his blood rose in a watery red plume toward the sky. Now together the ravaged naiads lift the painting from the wall and set the man’s water jar full of his half-gnawed bones on the floor. The last moment of their innocence in exchange for the funeral urn of Heracles’ friend. A fair trade, in any age. Lynn Mundell Lynn Mundell's writing has been published in literary journals including SmokeLong Quarterly, Monkeybicycle, Booth, Tin House, and Five Points, and in anthologies including New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction (W.W. Norton & Company). Her work has placed in the Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions short and longs lists between 2017 and 2020, and earned the 2019 Lascaux Prize in Creative Nonfiction. She is co-editor of 100 Word Story and its anthology, Nothing Short Of: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story (Outpost19). ** Sojourner In England, they took a painting out of a gallery because of seven women and one man but it may have been the breasts of young women or that two reached for his arm as he kneeled by a pond strewn with fronds at water’s edge and their hair that tangled what was open although not much beyond lilies. How do you go out into morning with what’s left of sleep? How do you walk to a bus for Wildwood with buttons closed top to bottom? How do you journey alone? Not have the painting come back. Kyle Laws Kyle Laws is based out of Steel City Art Works in Pueblo, CO where she directs Line/Circle: Women Poets in Performance. Her collections include The Sea Is Woman (Moonstone Press, 2021), Uncorseted (Kung Fu Treachery Press, 2020), Ride the Pink Horse (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019), Faces of Fishing Creek (Middle Creek Publishing, 2018), This Town: Poems of Correspondence coauthored with Jared Smith (Liquid Light Press, 2017), So Bright to Blind (Five Oaks Press, 2015), and Wildwood (Lummox Press, 2014). With eight nominations for a Pushcart Prize and one for Best of the Net, her poems and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Germany. She is editor and publisher of Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press. ** Hylas, Three Ways I. Hylas. Buddy. Make good choices, OK? These nymphs aren’t hot for you. They’re effing nymphs. You can’t trust immortals, my dude. Drowning isn’t sexy. ll. Come away, Hylas They will say we seduced you, Deceived you, Destroyed you. But come away. This is a pond and not a grave, And you need not give us what you gave To he who slew your father-- We ask not your fealty Nor your soul We ask only that you come and play. Resign the quests, the glory, arete, Lay it down, and live a day. Come away. III. What’s true is that splash of red. It draws the eye, doesn’t it? There’s depth in it. There’s life and death. Maybe it’s passion, Maybe it’s blood. It’s really just red. Brian O'Sullivan Brian O'Sullivan teaches rhetoric and modern English literature in southern Maryland. He has had work accepted for publication in One Art, Everyday Fiction, and several nonfiction academic journals. ** Song of the Water Lilies I will return, Hercules. Fear not, this land holds cellars of nectar & ambrosia— every grove and valley pulses with the slumbering of the half- dead. He wrapped my torso, parsed in silk, said may the promise of victory rise upon your laurels. Fare you well, my love. Be swift. Know no evil. Look not to the nymphs of the river, they wait for men to stumble upon their glade, then make nests of their flesh. You know maidens, they like to tease. His eyes shone like fists. The forest had a stillness. The leaves, my shifting audience to a lone man’s soliloquy. The oaks parted. The sun crawled. At the river’s edge, I felt no divinity, no gods pulled me forward & no mortals held me back. Only naiads. Come into the water, my love. We raise no harm. Us mistresses of the sea, bloom pearls during childbirth, wash away into lake- foam. We know no Olympus. But you, a God, you of men & fire & a furnace you staking wars of heaven and earth? Stay, here where the lily pads make silly fancies with the breeze. Here, where the reeds obey only the rubber-sheen of the dew after a rain. Here, where we were grown, from Gaya’s lips, us the sinful harmonies before the pipe loses its guiding breaths. The crickets fling their bodies to the shore, there where the grass is always green, where the zinnias never pale, where the salmon- spawn always trace the riverbeds home. Now a hand from the surface, rippling the join of blood. Maybe I know her name. Maybe I was a god because I could not bear to be a nymph, to be half-mortal. To frolic with all this price of light. Every tendon of her body curves into my shadow, till we are one. So this tenderness is our undoing. So all the flowers in her hair float upstream. Did the thunder soften its own rumbling? I hadn’t quite noticed. Only the sound of her lips on my full bones. Anoushka Kumar Anoushka Kumar (she/her) is a student and writer from India, with work forthcoming or published in Vagabond City Lit, perhappened mag, the Eunoia Review, and elsewhere. She likes wood-panelled flooring and Phoebe Bridgers. Find her on Twitter @duskelegies. ** Ours Naiads plot, we must have him as he bends to fill a water vessel; many object; it is wrong to take him, this beautiful young man Hylas. He is to be ours! To be lover of nymphs, called as by sirens to the depths, he may not resist nubile bodies, locks of hair decorated, plaited with lilies entwine his arms, pull at strong limbs caressed by warm summer breeze; gentle hands coax as sweet voices croon, mesmerize until he slips beneath, breath ceased until lips reawaken, dream senses overtaken, soothed and stimulated, smiles of triumph, his eyes glassy as waves wash over his body, their kisses everywhere and nowhere – lost to Herecles he is found beneath the surface, ours… Julie A. Dickson Julie A. Dickson is a NH poet and writer whose muses are water, nature and animals. Her poems appear in Misfit, Blue Heron Review, Gleam and The Ekphrastic Review among others. Dickson loves writing to prompts and finds the visual stimulation of art gratifying. Her work as a senior companion enriches both her life and those of elders. Dickson's full length works are available on Amazon. She is an extensive reader, curled up with her cats is a favourite past-time. ** Friday Night at the Duck and Pond Vessel to hand he enters the seedy establishment, and puddles across a liquid floor of tequila laced with straws. His armour slips, just a pocket of one-liners to protect him. Needing to quench his thirst he spies a septet of wenches and approaches the bobbed heads nestled around the fishbowl. He notes the painted lips too bright amid flowered crowns. At once his eyes are drawn to alabaster skin peeking out from skimpy skirts that barely cover their virtue, lily pads placed strategically across the silken flesh. The slurp of curled liquor invades the air as one flicks her hair wilfully across a breast; fingers open, a pearl in a palm winks seductively and he falls, winged arm flailing in reed. Kate Young Kate Young lives in England and has been passionate about poetry since childhood. She generally writes free verse and loves responding to art through ekphrastic poems. Her poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Nitrogen House, Words for the Wild, Poetry on the Lake, Alchemy Spoon and a Scottish Writers Centre chapbook. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlet A Spark in the Darkness recently won The Baker’s Dozen competition with Hedgehog Press and is due to be published. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet. ** Hylas and the Nymphs They said he’d been abducted. Hard to imagine anything else when you’re on a small vessel with mostly drunken sailors and some hero figure whose slave you were. Well, more or less. They’d later say Hylas was Heracles’ favorite, his companion. Since he was one of the youngest on that Argonautic expedition, he’d been sent ashore to fetch water. They’d anchored somewhere around Cios, in Mysia. The nymphs tell another story, and Hylas has remained shtum ever since. Someone had been in the know of the incident, and the story went thus: “A water nymph, rising from the spring, saw the gorgeous boy up close. And Aphrodite (always someone to blame, of course) made her fall in love and in confusion. But very soon she saw her chance. When he dipped his pitcher into the stream, she knew what to do. She rounded his slim neck with her arm, pulled him towards her, and kissed him." Heracles and Polyphemus—if anybody knew his nymphs, it would have been Polyphemus, after all, his mother was one—left the ship to go looking for Hylas, while the Argonauts were getting into each other’s hair over whether to follow them or not. But Heracles and Polyphemus in the end had other things to do (blame the Gods) as in twelve labours and founding the city of Cius – small stuff like that. Hylas, in the meantime had married the nymph who made him forget what went before. After all, a nymph is a nymph and they do have certain tricks up their non-existing sleeves. the boy’s hair curled the nymph touched it just there oblivion Rose Mary Boehm Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was twice nominated for a Pushcart. Her fourth poetry collection, THE RAIN GIRL, was published by Chaffinch Press in 2020. Want to find out more? https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/ ** Hylas and the Nymphs He was already lost soon as he saw them, pale and luminous as white lilies, floating on dark water, their skin glowing like the light of a fallen moon, its radiance rising from below into the night air, their arms reaching for him, delicate and curious, as though they had been waiting for him alone, as though only he could satisfy their dreams and fill the emptiness in their hearts. In the old stories innocence is never much protection. Stumbling onto some forbidden vision of more than human beauty will be your undoing. Powerless in the grip of your exquisite astonishment, leaning eagerly in you will be taken down without mercy, or even time enough for one last breath. Mary McCarthy Mary McCarthy has always loved writing and art, which makes Ekphrastic work particularly appealing to her. Her work has appeared in many anthologies and journals, most recently in The Plague Papers, edited by Robbi Nester, and The Ekphrastic World, edited by Lorette C. Luzajic, as well as the most recent issues of Earth’s Daughter’s, Verse Virtual, and Visual Verse. ** The Way it Happened in the ancient story, they called to him—reed-voiced, bird-fluttering from among water lilies, they beckoned and beseeched, reaching, their thrice-bound flower crowns scented the air, with wine-dark mouths, they called again and again, come to us, Hylas-- and tempted, snared, helpless, he stepped-- the water, alive, leapt. . . and he was gone. But maybe he saw flowing hair, a body, water-kissed and sun-shimmered-- and he wanted. Possession. It’s what men did, he’d been told, chase and conquer, a hunt, a game of power and pleasure. But her sisters heard the shouts and cries—a yank, a thrust a rock, crushed, he fell beneath the rippled water. . . and he was gone Or, perhaps he was tired of endless battles and filthy men, who taught and taunted, used him, lovely boy. He longed to be bathed in honeyed-light, filled with flower-scent. They found him lost and hungry. With his berry-lips, he kissed their naiad hands, Please let me stay. And they did-- washed him in the river of oblivion . . . and he was gone. Merril D. Smith Merril D. Smith is a historian and poet. She lives in southern New Jersey. Her poetry and short fiction have been published most recently in Anti-Heroin Chic, Black Bough Poetry, Fevers of the Mind, and Nightingale and Sparrow. ** Peace Leave him, they said, the women in the water, the brute who killed your father. He, who dandled you on his knee and gave you all that you have, is now no more than bleak bones and another notch on Herakles’ sword. Leave him, they said, the automaton who kills without thinking and fancies himself sensitive, overcome by beauty. Does he really believe you could ever look at him and not see your father’s bloody corpse, his lifeblood pouring, not hear his last cry? When he paws at you and calls you his beautiful boy, do you not see the spear thrusting again and again into your father’s throat? Herakles took the life of Theiodamas as easily as a goat’s for a feast. That you, Theiodamas’ son, might resent it, has never crossed his mind once. Hylas bent his head to the water and sobbed. He had had no choice but to follow Herakles. Too young to fight, snatched from his mother’s arms, a curly-headed boy, by the man who called himself a hero, he thought himself lucky not to have been put to the sword. How his mother would have welcomed such a fate. He had no choice. But the honey-dripping whisperings, the caresses in the night, the bloody hands wiping away his tears, had driven him almost mad. Come, she said, her hand on his arm. We will not take, or demand or kill. We ask you to come with us because we value beauty and grief, and we will heal your wounds. Hylas looked at the women in the water among the waterlilies and heard the peace that sang in the breeze ruffling the water. He laid down his sword and his sandals and he stepped into the pool. As the water closed above his head, he heard the strident bellow of Herakles as he pounded from the beached Argo looking for him, how the trees creaked and groaned as he pushed his way to the spring. He saw Herakles face, stricken with loss, and the fury that flashed in his eyes, and he smiled. A hand took his, in an uncomplicated clasp, and led him down among the trailing roots the silver-scaled fishes, to be loved forever. Jane Dougherty Jane Dougherty lives and works in southwest France. Her poems and stories have been published in magazines and journals including Ogham Stone, the Ekphrastic Review, ink sweat and tears, Nightingale & Sparrow and Brilliant Flash Fiction. Her poetry chapbooks, thicker than water and birds and other feathers were published in October and November 2020. ** The Concealed Skyline As he knelt down at the threshold that separated the two worlds, they promised to return him to his lost fates. He was born to be a King, Their sunlit faces eclipsing his love for Hercules, Slowly enticing him to their waters, Where human forms and mortal breaths sink, Where the sapphires engulf the sepia. The skies had been bright that day, but perhaps they were concealed as an anti-symbolic dogma. Hylas was about to be lost forever, Concealing the conspiracies of the clear skyline, Concealing the horizons that the Argo was yet to tread, He, still kneeling at the threshold, They, still singing out the promises, The canvas froze upon the Fates that were yet to follow, But even today, Jupiter continues to silently stare at the nymphs, Still waiting, upon the concealed skyline. Amrita Sharma Amrita Sharma is a Lucknow based writer currently pursuing her Ph.D. in English from the University of Lucknow. Her works have previously been published in Setu Bilingual, Earth Fire Water Wind: An Anthology of Poems, The Quiver Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Café Dissensus Everyday, AWS E-zine, Literary Yard, Trouvaille Review, Confluence: South Asian Perspectives, Women’s Web, Borderless Journal, , Tell Me Your Story, Muse India, Rhetorica Quarterly, GNOSIS, Dialogue, The Criterion, Episteme and Ashvamegh. Her area of research includes avant-garde poetics and innovative writings in the cyber space. ** Haiku we've been here before amidst apples and serpents it did not end well Elaine Sorrentino Elaine Sorrentino is Communications Director at South Shore Conservatory in Hingham, MA. Her work has been published in Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Ekphrastic Review, Writing in a Women’s Voice, The Writers' Magazine, Global Poemic, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Haiku Universe, Failed Haiku, and has won the monthly poetry challenge at wildamorris.blogspot.com. ** A Matter of Will Hylas, I have you now. Oh yes, you play around my dear, but you don’t know our secret. What makes you think you can come to our pond, where we outshine the lilies, pick and choose from among us as if we were mere flora, as if you were in charge? Don’t you know it’s we who decide which one of us will go with you? Today, however, the choice was this: which one of us, will to pull you in-- will you escape? or will we win? See the twinkle in my eye? I am the one to challenge you. Joan Leotta Joan Leotta: "I love writing to these challenges. Ekprhastic writing is one of my favourite forms. Hoping that my work inspires others to read their own meaning into these works. Hoping also I am right, and this nymph did resist." ** Youthful Imaginings on Alabaster Skin Corruption isn’t concealed with a lily pad or a fig leaf -or by political or public censorship. In erst this canvases allure of innocents and deceit did fix youthful imaginings on their alabaster skin. At times I’ve contemplated Hylas's hunger to touch; his a thirst to drink clear rock pool waters quite shameless only hankering a taste of their refreshing bath salts, sigh. I’ve enjoyed viewing this oil-painting on many occasions; Hylas and the Nymphs, by John William Waterhouse 1896 visiting the Manchester Art Gallery and dwelling nearby. And by the by, I come to buy a fine printed copy in 1986. And ever since, it has seduced my speculative thoughts, Shown up weaknesses in my theories and own politics It-isn’t-easy being virtuous and honourable…I confess when -female water nymphs have needs…desires to procure. It’s the weakness of some men in the hooks of a wench To-dine-in-hell. Or swim ashore and desire no more. But who are we kidding our-thirsts are never quenched. Beauty corrupts the purest of hearts, either to partakes or sit on the fence and then drown in idle censorship. Placing too much of an emphasis on innocence and nakedness. Light sheds light the dark precipitates only more darkness. Mark Andrew Heathcote Mark Andrew Heathcote is adult learning difficulties support worker, his poetry has been published in many journals, magazines and anthologies, he resides in the UK, from Manchester, Mark is the author of In Perpetuity and Back on Earth two books of poems published by a CTU publishing group, Creative Talents Unleashed. |
Challenges
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