It Happened on a Monday 
 
I was fiddling by the pond when a mosquito hawk (aka dragon fly) appeared on my shirt. Her long body was mostly neon blue and her wingsspangling gossamer. She stayed on my sleeve (white, her favourite) while I slipped into my kayak. I was amused and delighted, but I wondered what the neighbours might think. They smiled, admiring my gaudy bauble. ‘It’s not my mosquito hawk,’ I called out. ‘I’m just taking her for a spin around the pond.’ ‘When will it be my turn?’ asked Sally. (She’s 7 with pig tails.) ‘Soon,’ I said. ‘Be patient,’ I advised. I feathered on with the mosquito hawk,her claws grabbing the weave of my shirt. She tilted her bulbous eyes towards me, and we wondered what we might have for dinner. 
 
Donna-Lee Smith

With nod, wink, and gratitude to James Tate. 
 
Donna-Lee Smith spends halcyon summer days in her kayak exploring pond life in the Laurentian hills north of Montreal. She has long admired the dragon fly for its prodigious eating habits (consumes hundreds of mosquitos, on a good day) and for its flying abilities (zooms up to 30 miles perhour).

**

Why I’m Sitting  in a French Jail Cell

Of course, Giverny was at the top of my list on my first
trip to France. Since childhood, Monet has been my
favourite artist. But lately I’ve longed to go back, test my
new scheme.

It all started when museum curators began x-raying
Monet paintings to see what was lurking in those first
layers of paint. He despised showing a canvas before it
was finished, and unfortunately felt many paintings were
never complete. Only he knew what hid below the
water’s surface. One painting of wisteria disclosed a
water lily underneath. Frugal, but was there more to
find?

I began wondering what was under the real pond, even
dreamed about it– crazy, crazy dreams. Surely Atlantis 
wasn’t there!  But could there be sealed vaults, hidden 
bodies, or something only Monet would think of to
enhance the reflection of sky and light? I became
obsessed with being the first tourist, maybe first
American, to know
what was at the bottom of the pond.  (Of course, I
couldn’t tell my husband my plan.)

Every autumn trip to France has an overcast or drizzly
day, so I insisted we go to Giverny then, when we could 
have more of the garden to ourselves. I faked a trip to les
toilettes, while my husband was looking through
postcards. Rushed back to the pond, didn’t think anyone
was watching. I bent over first, taking a photo of a lily,
then pretended to trip and fall in. 

I guess it would have been more convincing if I had
splashed about and yelled, but I told the police I was too
embarrassed to cry for help. It wasn’t that deep, and I
knew I couldn’t drown (well, thought I wouldn’t. Who
knows if I’d get caught in roots or hoses or whatever
they’ve installed to keep the pond looking so clean).

Unfortunately, a drizzly day didn’t give me much light to
see underwater. Plus some kid had to announce, “Mom,
there’s an old lady in the water. Can I jump in, too?”

Now I’m shivering even in a blanket, sitting on a jail cot.
I’m not officially under arrest, but they’re bringing in a
doctor to check my condition. My husband will probably
back up my story that I really am visually impaired and
clumsy enough to fall in. At least I hope he buys my
story.

Alarie Tennille

Alarie Tennille was a pioneer coed at the University of Virginia, where she earned her degree in English, Phi Beta Kappa key, and black belt in Feminism. Alarie received the first editor’s choice Fantastic Ekphrastic Award from The Ekphrastic Review,  and in 2022, her latest book, Three A.M. at the Museum, was named Director’s Pick for the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art gift shop.[alariepoet.com ]

**

The Water Lily Pond
​ 
Light, natural light across his painting.
An aliveness, once in a century.
Pink Japanese lilies long dead.
 
It's different in France, it's true,
my friend France Marie nods.
She says twue, stabbing 
her cigarette in my face. My eyes burn.
 
Everything is better there−
the light, the colours.
Surely, she exaggerates.
I mentally roll my eyes.
 
France Marie was right about France!
Monet was right about the colours.
Blues and greens match trees and lilies.
That balletic Japanese bridge.
 
I'm afraid that I've become a bit obsessed,
Lilies ordered. As much time
gardening and caring for them
as painting.
 
It feels possible to walk into that painting.
Something slows the breath,
soothes the eye. Soft wind,
bobbing lily pads. Grasses hissing.
Shadows swaying in
a slow waltz.
 
Did it settle Monet's eyes?
Cataracts were beginning.
There is a hazy glow to his paintings.
Images of the same scene a few years later 
blues gone muddy, reds replace pastels.

Lynne Kemen

Lynne Kemen lives in Upstate New York. Her chapbook, More Than a Handful, was published in 2020.  Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in La Presa, Silver Birch Press, The Ravens Perch, Fresh Words Magazine, Topical Poetry, The Ekphrastic Review, and Blue Mountain Review. She is an editor for The Blue Mountain Review and The Southern Collective Experience in Atlanta, Georgia. SCE will publish Shoes for Lucy in the fall. She is the Interim President of Bright Hill Press in Treadwell, New York.

​**

Bridge

I linger at the blue-green rail
wondering whether to wander
into the weep of willows
or remain, as the artist did,
studying waterlilies.
Buoyant as the green pads
then pulled down
to the muddy roots.
Entanglements.

I want to stand mid-way.
To pause between life’s
question marks,
free of the world
of complications,
the who’s and where’s
and why’s.

I want to bask in the rainbow
of greens at the pond’s edge,
to reimagine Monet’s
cottage garden wild
with sunflowers.

Sandi Stromberg

Sandi Stromberg has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize and twice for Best of the Net. Her full-length poetry collection Frogs Don't Sing Red was released by Kelsay Books in April 2023. Widely published in small literary journals and anthologies, she recently joined the editorial staff of The Ekphrastic Review. Her poetry has also been translated into Dutch and published in Brabant Cultureel in the Netherlands. 

**

The Water Lily Pond

Minnows. Mussels. Snails.
Water striders. Dragonflies.
Feast fit for a frog.

Teri M. Brown

Born in Athens, Greece as an Air Force brat, Teri M. Brown now calls the North Carolina coast home. In 2020, she and her husband, Bruce, rode a tandem bicycle across the United States from Astoria, Oregon to Washington DC, successfully raising money for Toys for Tots. Teri’s debut novel, Sunflowers Beneath the Snow, is a historical fiction set in Ukraine, and her second novel, An Enemy Like Me, is set in WWII. Learn more at www.terimbrown.com. 

**

en plein air

I am on my back in the water, arms spread wide, my hair floating around me like a halo. Lily pads cover my breasts and pubis areas. Frogs and turtles climb up the palms of my hands and on to my arms to sun themselves.

I feel the sun on my face and I close my eyes.

Rushes and cattails act as a barrier between me and the shore; muskrats weave in and out looking to steal loon eggs. An otter chatters nearby.

The loons cry, wailing at the muskrats, chasing them until the muskrats disappear among the grasses to their underwater homes. 

The trees rustle in the wind, the voices of the gods are calling to me.

My eyes remain closed but I can feel myself slowly float around the pond. The sun is no longer on my face and it is too early for night so I guess, correctly, I am under the Japanese bridge.

I hear lovers laugh  as they walk across the Japanese bridge, oohing at the frogs and turtles, and throwing rocks into the river to watch the water ripple. She comments they can see the bottom and laughs when she sees a school of fish dart by. She dares him to jump in. He scoffs and she continues to taunt him. I hear the sound of shoes hitting the bridge and then she calls it off, saying she was only joking. His voice sounds relieved as he puts his shoes back on.

They cannot see me. I continue to listen.

I hear the creak of the wood as they continue on, their voices getting more distant until finally I cannot hear anything but the croak of the frogs, the wailing from the loons, and the sound of water lapping at my ears.

I think about where I have been and where I want to go. Do I enjoy myself at the pond? The water is clear, the flora and fauna protect and entertain me. The Japanese bridge is sturdy across the pond, painted blue and greens to blend in with the wetlands.

I wiggle my toes.

I feel the lily pads drift across my body, moving from their secret places and exposing me to the elements. 

I float from under the bridge to the centre of the pond.

The sun no longer warms my face.

My eyes open and squint up to the sky, looking for the sun but the sun is going down now. In the places between the trees, I can see the reds and oranges as the sun dips away from me.

As the sun descends behind the trees, I can hear the wildlife in the woods starting to stir. Soon, does and stags will come to the pond to drink their nightly fill. The muskrats, convinced the loons are gone, will come out of their darkened underwater homes, noses twitching as they swim to the cattails to eat. One eyes a water lily near my head and starts to hesitantly swim towards me but stops, gives a stony glare, and goes back the other way.

The moon has risen and moonlight penetrates the waterbody and the world beneath the water comes alive.

I can feel a school of fish as they pass the underside of my body. The frogs and turtles have left me, and are camped out on the logs that dot the wetlands. I hear geese honk as they fly south.

Soon it will be winter but I am not cold and the water remains warm.

I do not know how long I’ve been in the pond. Years maybe? I have no concept of how time passes, I just watch the sun and the moon rise and fall. The seasons come and go but the sun always warms me and the flora and fauna delight me.

I breathe.

I am alive.

Scarlet MacKenzie

Scarlet MacKenzie (she/they) is many things and mainly keeps herself together with the internet, dark chocolate, and coffee. Based in Northern Michigan, Scarlet is fond of the gods in the trees and the water that surrounds her. Her favourite Darcy is Matthew Macfadyen. She is @msscarletwrites and https://msscarletwrites.online.

**

​impulsive thoughts on the lily pond bridge

i hear the crash that disturbs the peace.
feel my toes squish into the soft. see the 
whimsy of the lily blossoms while I stand there, 
those joyful blooms, a pink oasis in the green. 
they open like my heart.

after the water settles, i see small 
ripples from the movement of me, 
my breathing & beating blood;
& from insects skating on the surface, 
a turtle swimming to a sunning spot, 
a frog calling for a mate. 
 
i hear the buzzing chirping singing of the critters,
cicadas from the treeline,
the shushing of willow leaves,
& the sighing of the breeze,

my body is baptized by the muddied water of 
my landing & the smell of wet decay.

when the peace returns i’ll be part of it,
a participant of the present,
another 
joyful 
bloom.

Cara Morgan

Cara Morgan (they/them) is a disabled, queer, neurodivergent poet and artist from rural Maine. They host a music and poetry podcast on Spotify called the sunshine lounge and virtual poetry workshops for traditionally marginalized voices to make art. They are passionate about their cats, cool rocks, making playlists, funky earrings, and supporting other creatives. Their debut chapbook collection, Dear Diseased Body, is available now through Bottlecap Press.

**

Breaks in the Lilies

Because I couldn’t paint or write about it
I fished the scattered breaks in the lilies.
The pine planks rattled as children ran back & forth
to and from two moms, two dads, an old man
smoking at a picnic table; pappy 
a little girl with ginger pigtails called
him, his grin like a minute crack in a glass
of whiskey, thin & crooked, uncertain
how long it might spread or break and free it-
self, the crows and bullfrogs carrying on
too far and quick for the children to catch 
the fish, too, for an old man with a worm. 

Robert E. Ray

Robert E. Ray is a retired public servant. His poetry has been published by Rattle, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Wild Roof Journal, The Ekphrastic Review and in four poetry anthologies. Robert lives in coastal Georgia. 

**

desolate 
 
feelings of azure, sapphire, avocado, jade, 
and callow mixing in water filling the canvas 
the brushed leaves of willows, ferns, petals 
cerulean, flushed, and cherry 
squint and the colors wash together 
under the bridge that moves 
from its two-dimensional space 
into a three-dimensional contemplation 
hanging over Monet’s Pond for surely 
it is his now after so many have seen
it the way he did—the arc of the bridge,
the glint of light from the sun, the mirror of water 
between rafts of lilies under the silenced 
wind, a slight rain, and the soft peeping of birds

Anne Graue

Anne Graue (she/her) is the author of Full and Plum-Colored Velvet, (Woodley Press) and Fig Tree in Winter (Dancing Girl Press). Her work appears in Gargoyle, Verse Daily, Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, SWWIM Every Day, EcoTheo Review, and in The Book of Donuts (Terrapin Books) and Coffee Poems (World Enough Writers). She is a poetry editor for The Westchester Review and for The Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry.

**

One of These Days 
 
We’ll walk andante this cerulean afternoon
pick a spot with panoramic view
amid the jazz of birdsong
the gentling hum of summer.

I may stand a while bare-shouldered  
on the bridge of sighs 
wait for you to reach my side.
The minutes will melt like honey

the hours will roll, as the bliss 
of earned rest after labours well done.  
We’ll bring food and wine 
we’ll bring our good muscles, 
 
our time flowing unscripted
like stepping-stones across the lilied waters,
and we’ll stay until the blueness of dusk 
is a falling tenderness all about us.

Nina Nazir

Nina Nazir (she/her) is a British Pakistani artist, poet and general creative bod based in Birmingham, UK.  She's had work published in various journals, including Ink Sweat & Tears, Free Verse Revolution, Messy Misfits Club, Unlost Journal, Harana Poetry and Visual Verse among others.  When she's not teaching, she's making art or poems.  Other than that, she is never not reading.  You can find her on Instagram: @nina.s.nazir and Twitter: @NusraNazir

**

A Bilingual Tanka in Irish and English  

dánta scaipthe
ina nduilleoga báite
bruscar lúcháireach!
   tá cigirí ón mbardas
   sa tóir ar an té a chum


like water lilies
poems are scattered here and there
ecstatic litter!
    municipal inspectors
    are looking for the culprit

Gabriel Rosenstock

Gabriel Rosenstock is a bilingual poet, tankaist, haikuist, translator and novelist. Many of his books, for adults and children, are free: gabriel rosenstock | edocr Gabriel Rosenstock - Free Kids Books

**

Quietude
 
Moments of silence
On gently arched bridge
Noonday sun kisses pond;
Egrets who fed early morning gone
Till dusk when insects bring fish to 
Water’s surface, cicadas buzz their call
All creatures lift heads in unison wonder,
Turn heads toward this still water
Ever calm, lilies blush pink against dark
Reflection, green pads and fronds, Willow
Leaves brush the ground, teasingly close
I stand perfectly still, taking in the painting
Languishing in a moment, frozen in time
Years fade away, it’s just the now
Poignant, poetic scene written about
Over this empty bridge, these lilies
Never seem to change, the portrait 
Does not diminish this quietude

Julie A. Dickson

Julie A. Dickson loves writing, and when given a prompt, all the better. Her poetry appears in over 65 journals, including Misfit, Masticadores, Open Door and The Ekphrastic Review. Dickson holds a BPS in Behavioral Science, has served on two poetry boards, as a guest editor on several publications and has full length works available on Amazon. Julie advocates for captive elephants and feral cats.

**

​The Lilies and the Pond 
 
The magnificence of the wild world overwhelms and inspires me.
The water lilies  seem to bathe as an exotic in love.
They create a seductive dance in silent beauty. 
I  am overcome and get lost in the mystery of it all.
The dance of the foliage and the water.
My brush paints without my help.
My canvas is my soul and paints by command.

These little dots are my heart and I live only to paint.
To create is to live.
I am amazed that my hand moves without my command.
Green is the color of life,of earth, of birth.
It transcends the agony of the every day.
It justifies my life -
it is why I was born.
To give birth to a forest of trees and foliage that will live forever.
And constantly renew itself.
Born again each year.
 
Sandy Rochelle

Sandy Rochelle is an award winning poet, actress and filmmaker. She is the recipient of the President's Award for Literature. And appeared on Broadway with the Acting Company of Lincoln Center. Sandy is a Voting Member of the Recording Academy in the Spoken Word Category.

​**

What I Would Like to Ask Monet
 
We arrived at Giverny, in early April, just after a cleansing rain but long before the pond’s lilies would awaken. The bridge, unlike this most famous of his renditions,  was bereft of vines. The brown, brackish pond water was simply a holding place for  green lily pads that floated like lonely ships, waiting for their buds, floral cargo to awaken. I should have realized there would be no expanse of  lilies, summer flowers, in early spring, yet, Monet had not prepared me for this view. He painted the pond and footbridge eighteen times, several versions even when the lilies slept, in autumn. Yet not this view. And I wondered why. 
 
My visit was almost a hundred years too late to ask him, so instead I turned to the hens in the side yard to ask my question. I guessed these were descendants of the original clutch of egg layers and so  perhaps, since he loved their eggs for breakfast, their ancestors  might have overheard his reasons and passed on their knowledge. 
 
Clucking at me angrily, these tawny reds declined to answer. Did they not know the answer? Or did they disdain the question, still annoyed with Monet for relegating them to a side yard, for not painting them, although his breakfast table profited daily from their fresh eggs.
 
I sauntered back to the bridge and back to the viewing spot where Monet set up his canvas. Breathing in deeply, I imagined the scents of the wonderful flowers that were not yet in bloom, Glad for the painting, I mentally imagined it as it was when he painted that scene as I know it best. I had no answers, but then again, answers are not everything. It is in wondering,  admiring and in questioning that our spirit grows.
 
Joan Leotta

Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. She performs and writes tales featuring food, family, and strong women. Internationally published, she’s a 2021, 2022 Pushcart nominee, Best of the Net Nominee,  and 2022 runner-up, Robert Frost Competition. Recent publications include MacQueen’s Quinterly, Last Leaves, Verse Virtual, and Gargoyle. Her new chapbook, Feathers on Stone is published by Main Street Rag. ​

**

Crossing the Beautiful Arch
 
What I see when I view the bridge:
I see the woman’s face, she who fought the painful 
Battle against cancer, and is fighting still
     Her face melding with others’

My child is Purity. She enters the room
And renders her grace, her innocence so
Sweet it stabs my heart. Resplendent visage--
     So serene
 
Looking again, I see no-longer-agile Grandpapa
Peering into his future, wanting to know how his eight
Grandchildren are faring, inquiring of them
     If he’s yet alive
 
Again, I consider the arch; there I spy my own
Grandmother, walking slowly across, slightly bent,
Clutching the railing, and smiling
 
Assured, she’ll see loved ones anon; she’d known
Her stay in Hopehill Residence was duly
Temporary, its length of days designed by God,
     But still--
 
My grandmother settles in; she has work
To do. What does the singing have to do
With lilies in a pond? How does beauty relieve?
     It does
 
Carole Mertz

Carole Mertz writes in Parma, Ohio. She is Poetry Editor of Ocotillo Review. www.carolemertz.com

**

I Met You on a Journey 

You took my hand on the bridge,
fed me morsels of poetry,
made me hungry for more--
words filled my empty spaces.

Unsure of intentions,
searching for inspiration,
you nourished my hopes,
suggested passages to new places.

You read aloud luscious lines,
phrases sang and flowed together
prompting us to bake fruited muffins
filled with sweetness by design.

Your art was whimsical--
tempting me to mimic the style
of patterns, colours, and circles
like a vibrant parade marching by.

You shared nuggets of your craft,
I need only follow your map.
Insecurities at bay, I continue onward
knowing I, too, have something to say.

Lois Perch Villemaire

Lois Perch Villemaire writes poetry, flash memoir and fiction. Her work has appeared in such places as Blue Mountain Review, The Ekphrastic Review, One Art: A Journal of Poetry, Pen In Hand and Topical Poetry. Anthologies, including I Am My Father’s Daughter and Truth Serum Press - Lifespan Series have published her memoir and poetry. Originally from the Philadelphia area, Lois lives in Annapolis, MD, where she enjoys yoga, researching family connections, fun photography, and doting over her African violets.

**

Abridged

She was supposed to be like everyone else, crossing the bridge at the exact right time, cheerleader hair semi-neatly swept upwards, thick thighs covered in Lululemon. An artist, creator of winsome disarray, time skewed, sometimes too early, and often embarrassed about being late. A huge canvas to muddle through, that lively, feckless brain, shooting messages in multiple directions, all leading away from the bridge and toward heedless abandon, although her intentions were good. Always good, be a good girl, wash your hair, just put it up, you’re young, your face will carry until, finally, that million-dollar smile quit working its charm, the oven was too hot, she baked too close to the heat, the kiln failed the clay and today, the most significant day so far, her friends line the bridge like so many similar frosted cakes, perfectly cool, just waiting to be eaten, waiting to take a bite as well, ravenously hungry like her, but unlike her, they will all ascend the bridge, together. No one says her name.

Spotless line of girls
Caps and gowns sunlight-shimmer
Cross over to new life

Debbie Walker-Lass

Debbie Walker-Lass is a poet, collage artist, and writer living in Decatur, Georgia. Her work has appeared in several journals and magazines, including The Ekphrastic Review, Poetry Quarterly, Haikuniverse, The Light Ekphrastic and Natural Awakenings, Atlanta, among others. She has recently read live for The Poet’s Corner. When not creating, she can be found beachcombing on Tybee Island or hanging out with her husband, Burt, and dog, Maddie. Kind greetings to all ekphrastic poets!

**

In the Round

I stood on this bridge daily
not knowing whether the lilies
were themselves or a reflection

all their colours blend, mingling
with reeds, water and sky, green
dominating, flecked with pink

my impressions and painterly skill
combined to inspire my gift
to a nation weary of war

of my sanctuary's lasting peace
to line Parisian gallery walls
and celebrate an armistice

that could not hold, but my work
"a wave with no horizon, no shore"
would survive future conflicts

I thought to preserve my vision
not knowing the garden itself
would be maintained as it was

and many more admirers pass across
the arched bridge, making images
in seconds, that took me years

Adrienne Stevenson

Adrienne Stevenson lives in Ottawa, Canada. A retired forensic scientist, she writes poetry and prose. Her work has appeared in over sixty print and online journals and anthologies in Canada, USA, UK, Europe, India, and Australia. Adrienne is an avid gardener, voracious reader, and sometime folk musician.

**

Surprises within the ordinary day.
 
We wait each morning at the bridge, just to the left ‑ the side where the willow fronds slide across my skin in the early morning light, just barely a tickle, but a wakening call to the morning. Each day starts this way. Coffee in hand and the crumb of croissant an ant’s delight when it fumbles and bounces its way down to the lily pads, their pinkish petals tinged with a shading of pale grey, like an artist had shyly blended his oily palette. A silence above the frogs’ landing ports, below the murkiness hiding the busyness of fish of golden and yellow and orange, hiding and darting amongst the tangle and twists of stalks and decaying, yellowing leaves. When the sun rises just enough to show white the stretched arms of the bridge we walk slowly around the edge of the pond. We don’t speak, we step neatly in unison, our laced shoes matching, our steps and strides a metrical pattern. We like the routine, we like the silence, we like the day revealing the leftovers of the night’s rhythm and thrumming hum. Its secrets sometimes revealed as we watch. A quieter hush occasionally falls as we pass into shadows, the coolness of the draped willows hide our private journey and discoveries, the secret surprises. Those things we didn’t expect or rely upon, but welcome as an arc of change amidst our routine. Perhaps the delights of a new routine would be revealed beside the lily pads and golden fishes. Dankness sometimes sullies the edges of our pink suede shoes, tainting them like the day is not as pure as our shoes expected. Mud squeezes up over the edge, like icing squeezing from between the sweet pastries that we see in dainty shops way beyond the bridge. We sometimes find coins or tossed cigarettes or the trickle within an amber glass bottle. One day we found a blue bottle and the sunlight spun a thousand stories around the bevelled edge of the rim. Today we found the tips of fingers laced around the lily pad, the ones with pinkish petals, blended with grey. The fingers were blue grey much like the lily’s petals, but a cold blue with delicate veins showing through the waxy skin. The nails spoke a contrast with their proud bold scarlet, a jagged statement amongst the greens and grey, and pinkish white. One finger swollen and bloated boasted a sapphire ring gleaming just below the surface of the murky pond, it was tucked slightly beneath a lily pad, barely visible except for the bright blue glint as the goldfishes brushed past, their contrast pretty and pleasant. A welcome highlight in our daily routine, hiding secretly maybe awaiting our glow of appreciation, that bloated hand hidden in the shadows of the day, not quite bold enough to claw into the sunlight beyond the shade of the graceful willow tree. Perhaps that will happen tomorrow when we come by with our coffee and croissants and our cleaned pink suede shoes.

Julie Rysdale

Julie Rysdale: "For a lifetime, I taught English to secondary school students. I recently reflected that the students had also been teaching me about writing, so I am having another crack at it. I especially enjoy playing with words to paint a poetic picture."

**

Studies of The Water Lilies

One water lily is not a garden, but a beginning.
Yet one can be two:
the act, and the reflection of the act.

Nor is the lily the pond, though its world is water
and its life is the pond,  liminals of small water, 
shore a rim reflected in sky 
as sky is reflected in water.

To study the water lily is to study life itself--
its depths unseen, wavering, yet anchoring
all that is above, connect earth to sky
through the translucences of light.

Two, three, and more, hovering
letting sun become roots, roots become pads
drifting, yet never leaving their boundaries
making of a corner of darkness, opalescent light.

Shimmering surfaces touch the edges of each lily
until each a mirror of the other, yet each alone
a palm gently holding effusive petals, mesmery.

Shore fronds may overreach, green small bridges
mimicking a bridge above, yet they will never be free
from the shore, will envy the lily its lithe existence.

The lilies float, catch a fair Dragon Fly
that barely makes the lily pad shiver.  
The kaleidoscope
in the eye of this  gentle visitor 
 mimics too the coolness:
 viridescent trees nodding above all.

One could study the water lilies a lifetime
patterns without repetitions
echoes without ceasing.

Le Bassin aux  Nymphe'as 
defying boundaries
each a foreshadowing of the next.

Carol Lee Saffioti-Hughes

Carol Lee Saffioti-Hughes is a professor Emerita of the University of Wisconsin System and a former librarian in a log cabin library in the north woods of Wisconsin, USA.  A nominee for the Pushcart Prize for her poem, "Plein Air," her work has appeared in journals including The San Antonio Review, Dos Gatos Press, The Greensboro Review, Ekphrastic Review, Poetry Hall, Moss Piglet, The Awakenings Review, among many others. The Root River Voices anthologies contain her poems;  she is also found in the anthology, Unsettling America, published by Penguin Books, New York, and is a prize winner in the 2023 Rosebud poetry competition. Also, she is a member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, the  Root River Poets and the Spectrum School of the Arts and Gallery in Racine. Her most recent chapbook, When Wilding Returns, is available from Cyberwit Press and elsewhere online.

**

the bridge of memories 
 
I remember the last time you crossed 
the bridge of memories, 
all was green and bright and fun, 
giggling as you ran, the sweetest song 
 
My heart skipped a beat by the river’s edge 
yet you rose like the sun 
running up the arched back of the water dragon, 
its skeletal form spanned the silence below 
 
Gripping it’s spine like a handrail 
you climbed onto its ribs 
such was the dare within you, 
such was the want of your heroic heart 
 
We looked into the broken mirror 
you saw flowers in your mother’s hair, 
you said you wanted to stroke the water 
as the willow with its long, elegant fingers 
 
The air hummed with honeybees 
and dripped with sickly sweet perfume 
and my hands were poised to catch you, 
yet you just opened you wings and flew 

Andy Eycott

Andy lives and works south of the Thames in Southeast London. His work has been published in various print and online magazines and anthologies such as, Obsessed with Pipework, Sarasvati, Marble, Ink Drinkers, Green Ink, Spillwords, Oddball, Shot Glass, Southlight, The Dawntreader, Networds and The Ekphrastic Review.

**

Odonata Sonata

Time swarms just as I do,
With my many friends and my many lovers
On the pond, reaping spring’s harvest.
“What do you know of life’s dolour?” He asks.
Time swarms slowly and lazily,
A bright and cumbrous shadow of the sun
Hangs atop the deep blue, the deeper green.
An afternoon stretched out like a silk scarf
Painted in colours of blushing cheeks and
Dancing girls and soft-soled men with sinewy limbs.
It dips it toes in the floating bed of flowers
Resting its feet on top of pillows of glassy water.

Time is what looks me in the eye --
And asks me to choose myself.
I choose to cling to his body, holding on.
Lest I drown.

Soon at the lake of foliage and insect song.
Its waters still yet alive and buzzing
Thousand screaming dragonflies
Sucking pink nectar. Their wings silver,
Their bellies swollen with want for more.
They hunger like men, the flowers seduce
Like women.
I, who is neither, or everything at once,
Want for nothing — at the moment.

Here is a father, pushing me gentle
(into the crushed green silk of the lake),
holding me soft
(water swims up my nose, it fills my eyes; I let out a sob)
It hits you before you know it has.
An unseen apricity, a hurrying aggression but
Who could blame such rush?

He soon gets up from the grasp
Of water, all golden-brown and muscled
An Apollon shining against the lucent sky.
Quiet yet obstreperous, almost too much so.
I sense that I have failed him somehow today.

Later in the day, the dragonflies feast
On my cheeks now flushed from the
Vernal sun, the pond is all cornflower
Blues sprinkled with splotches of
Soft water-lilies. Drops of water cling
To the petals. They are afraid to let go,
Afraid to drown, holding on
For dear life.

Upasana Mitter

A poet, writer and acrylic/oils/mixed-media artist, Upasana Mitter pursues a degree in Sociology from Calcutta University and resides in West Bengal, India. She occasionally sits down at a keyboard and lets herself go for a little too long. You can find her painting away her graceless inner turmoils on Instagram @rumpelstilskin1693. Her writing has previously appeared or forthcoming in The Ekphrastic Review and The Tiger Moth Review.

**

Every Lily Donned with Grief

With every deft stroke of the brush, Claude Monet must have felt closer to the God in which he didn’t believe — reinventing his life on canvas — 

refracting light, channeling reparations, playing hopscotch atop water lilies with oils, composing 250 times, but never quite getting it right

the burning aura of cataracts limiting light, altering his perception before banning the browns, dousing the earth tones, and finally annihilating the 

inky tones in favor of the baby blues and aquamarines — his indigo soul eclipsing the royal hues of sapphire as he hurled himself off a bridge and 

into the Seine — but life could not be eradicated like the swipe of his hues, so the humble river cast him back — tempting fate in his redo of

life — every lily donned with grief — proliferating with each heartbreak — first Camille, then Alice, and finally his firstborn son, Jean, to which

the loss of his wives paled blue in comparison —  hoping to change fate with every deft stroke of the brush, Monet tried to get closer to God — 

closer to the God in which he hoped to believe.

Ann Marie Steele

​Ann Marie Steele, who resides in Charlotte, NC, America, is a writer who dabs in poetry, as well as some essays and short stories. She holds a BS in Journalism (News-Editorial), and an MA in Secondary English Education. Although Ann Marie works as a high school English/Special Education teacher, she has a flair for writing poetry. She pens poetry about love and loss, and what she observes and experiences. Her writing has been described as resiliently defiant. Having published more than 200 pieces on Medium.com, she has quite recently reached the sought-after 1K follower milestone. When not writing or teaching, Ann Marie is an avid participant of Acro yoga aka Partner Acrobatics, where she can often be seen flying and hand-standing upside down just for kicks.

**

The Book of Miracles (part 1)

It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, my mother said. I thought it looked like the Garden of Eden or Heaven, maybe. Then I noticed something glowing. My mother went on to describe a woman. And she wasn’t standing on the bridge but floating just above it, with bare feet, my mother said, emphatically. Imagine that! Shoes were a big deal to my mother who grew up during the Great Depression and had to share a single pair of shoes with one of her sisters. The idea that someone would go barefoot by choice was foreign to her, more foreign, apparently, than a woman hovering in the air, giving off a green light though she was dressed almost entirely in blue.
 
I was rapt in part because my mother was not the storyteller in our family. She continued, describing in detail a weeping willow leaning into a pond, the surface of which was covered in lily pads. A bridge she had never seen, later identified as Japanese in style, arching over the water, looking as if it had all always been there, smack in the middle of Norwood Avenue. It was late afternoon, she explained, I was walking home late from school and suddenly the sky was dark and nothing looked familiar. I thought it was a tornado maybe, but when I looked around me, everything was still and green.
 
In other reported and/or verified Marian sightings, the Virgin Mary appeared near a grotto, a cave, a fountain, etc., but never a bridge. This would have happened at the end of the Golden Age of Marian Sightings (1830-1933). In my mother’s case no promises were made and Mary had no political message like the ones she delivered to Mary Ann Van Hoof of Nacedah, Wisconsin in 1949(1). There were no directives, no medals ordered to be worn by the devoted. In fact, when my mother saw the Virgin Mary, neither of them spoke at all. 
 
Were you lost? I asked. No, not really, my mother said, but yes, I guess I was. If you know what I mean? I did not know what she meant, but I nodded. This was how our relationship worked. I knew she needed someone to understand, deeply. And I had always been convincing with thoughtful facial expressions that suggested an intelligence I didn’t possess.
 
It is almost 6:00 when the hospital calls and the sky is beginning to darken. We can get you in to see your mother, the nurse says. You’ll have to sign in at reception and someone will meet you to help you get ready. You’ll have one hour. I thank her and grab my coat and the one thing I think my mother would want: her icon of the Virgin Mary.   
 
While my father prayed nightly to God standing in his boxers and t-shirt, my mother was a bit of a religious rebel in that she prayed directly to Mary. In terms of Mary, according to the church: venerate, okay, but worship, no. It sounds like semantics to me, but pray was my mother’s word, not mine. I don’t know exactly what she was praying for. I never asked.
 
My mother’s life was not what anyone would call blessed, which made me wonder: What if the important part of my mother’s vision was not the Virgin Mary, but the bridge? It occurred to me that I had seen this bridge, or one very much like it, similar in style if not colour. I was not in any state of ecstasy or in a trance; I was simply out walking and I wasn’t lost. I was in the woods behind my house. I had gone so far as to cross the railroad tracks and there was a small opening in the brush and I followed the thin, but unmistakable path to a pocket in the forest. When I looked across the small clearing I saw a bridge. It never occurred to me to cross it. It was just beautiful. Breath-taking, really. The bright-white simplicity of it and the surprise of finding it where I did was enough. It never glowed or changed color and I never saw any kind of apparition hovering around it. No words of advice or messages popped into my head upon seeing it. Could it be that it just was? And I just was? Could that be explanation enough?
 
My mother isn’t awake when I arrive which is okay because I’m not at the hospital for a visit. I’m here to help her cross over. She has been lingering for days. You and me, we’re good. I know you did the best you could. I say. And now you can rest. I place the small icon next to her. I brought Mary. Can you see her? Can you take her hand?
 
When I leave the hospital it is nightfall. I go home and cook dinner for my kids. My husband and I watch some t.v. and get ready for bed. The whole time, I’m waiting for the phone to ring. At 12:01  a.m.the hospital calls again and I hear the now familiar voice of the nurse: I’m sorry to tell you…
 
In the years since my mother’s death what I have come to realize is that the important thing was not the green bridge from my mother’s sighting or the white bridge seen on my walk, it was not even the appearance of the Virgin Mary. It was the story she told me. The story was an invitation, clumsily delivered and something I never felt called to respond to. But more and more I find myself wondering, what if I hadn’t been blind, but instead courageous enough to admit I didn’t understand and ask the difficult questions: What kind of lost were you? Why didn’t anyone help? Were you tempted to dip your toes in the green pond water even for a moment? 
 
Crystal Karlberg

1 Hogan, Susan. “‘Pray and pray hard’: When 100,000 waited to see the Virgin Mary on a Wisconsin farm.” The Washington Post (August 28, 2018).
 
Crystal Karlberg is a Library Assistant at her local public library and a speaker for Greater Boston PFLAG.

**

To Claude Monet Regarding The Water Lily Pond

Your brush it seems can bridge the sensed and seen,
the heavy humid air not quite a haze,
the sun, though distant, present as the sheen
that mirrors and electrifies your gaze

at patience and precision of your hand 
that's wrought  --  with love  --  maturely bloomed design 
in colors you had studied to command
soft harmonies that nature could enshrine

as solitude begetting only sound
of symphony an enclave would admit
as industry befitting sacred ground
consoling those, who weary of their wit,

would contemplate the wisdom of your pond
as witness here and now to their beyond.

Portly Bard

Portly Bard: Old man.
Ekphrastic fan. 
 
Prefers to craft with sole intent
of verse becoming complement...
...and by such homage being lent...
ideally also compliment.

​**

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 Phalaena, by Carlos Verger Fioretti. Deadline is July 7, 2023.

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

The Rules

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

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

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

​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 FIORETTI 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, July 7, 2023.

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

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

11. 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. 
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16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.

Join our second annual ekphrastic marathon! Click here or on image for details. Alternative options available for those who can't make the date.

 
Dear Ekphrastic Challengees,

Thank you all so much for submitting your top-tier pieces to The Ekphrastic Review; as in: to the art of Jennifer Angus this time. I have read and re-read your words with great joy and admiration. This was a fascinating challenge, and selecting pieces for publication was a tough task indeed. I hope you will enjoy reading the compilation. Hurrah for each and every writer, for The Ekphrastic Review and for The Wonderful Lorette!

Congratulations to all, go well,  Kate Copeland

**
​
Fine Dining
 
Fellow Woodlanders be seated!
The hard work is done,
the best china set out,
the heads have rolled
and now we are ready 
to eat the rest
giving thanks and gratitude
for what we are about to receive.
So fear not
let us enjoy our feast
no one is there to watch us eat.
All the rest are just dead meat.
 
Lynn White
 
Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Consequence Magazine, Firewords, Vagabond Press, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes Journal. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com///www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/
 
**

Feast of the Masses
 
commences
this fine evening
humans long departed,
we dine!
we the hunted
starving –
will partake
 
a feast
of the masses
table laden
unfamiliar plates,
dishes lain,
we dine!
like never before
 
no foraging
tonight
while men sleep,
well into cups –
fox joins buck,
lynx with peacock
none prey tonight.
 
Julie A. Dickson
 
Julie A. Dickson loves writing to art prompts and has contributed to The Ekphrastic Review for several years, having recently been a guest editor. Her poems appear in full length of Amazon and in journals including Misfit, Medusa's Kitchen, Lothlorien Review and The Ekphrastic Review, among others. Dickson holds a BPS in Behavioral Science and served on two poetry boards. She advocates for captive elephants and shares her home with two rescued feral cats.
 
**
 
Maddening Guests
 
Delicate dinner,
of sizzling ant eaters,
for maddening guests.
 
Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher
 
Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher has been writing since 2010 and has had many micro-flash fiction stories published. In 2018 her book Shorts for the Short Story Enthusiasts, was published and The Importance of Being Short, in 2019. Her most recent book In A Flash, was published in the spring of 2022. She currently resides on Long Island, New York with her husband Richard and dogs Lucy and Breanna.

**
 
The deer hunter has been maimed
by a grizzly up north
(yeah, the same smarmy hunter who wore pants with the scene of a tropical forest
and kept his parakeet caged)
and the traffickers' trucks
have been reported missing.
There are flying rumours
that all of them
were taken at the pass,
on the steepest road to Beelzebub's 
kingdom.
Our surviving friends
have made
their escape
and are on their way here. 
 
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 prolific writing career by self publishing on the worldwide community Wattpad since 2015 and on his WordPress blog An Awadh Boy's Panorama (https://anawadhboyspanorama.wordpress.com/)  Besides that, his works have been published in several varied publications as FemAsia Magazine, Hudson Valley Writers Guild, Inklette Magazine and others.
 
**
 
A Darwinian Dinner
 
This supper isn't on Circe’s
isle, or else the guests who’ve come to dine
would’ve all been turned into swine
instead of a menagerie
 
of creatures. Prêt à manger or to be
eaten: it’s the survival of the most able
to survive. The menu served at this table
caters for a spectrum of selected species.
 
Is this stuffed animal court Orwellian in hierarchy?
Who hosts this taxidermy feast? Are some
beasts more equal than others in this kingdom
of claws, furs, fangs, and beaks?
 
Which alpha male Henry
beheaded those four heads
adorning that bright red
wall? What un-wifely treachery
 
was committed by that 
bodiless, cornigerous quartet? 
When tea
 
is finally served, will Mr and Mrs Wildcat
have stopped arguing? Do Lord Fox and Lady Deer regret
having invited them to their soirée?
 
Danny de Oliveira 
 
Danny de Oliveira lives on the Sussex coast of the UK. He has been writing amateur ekphrastic poetry for many years, becoming one of his favourite poetic forms. He self-published a book of poems called SURGINGS in 2015. It contains his very first ekphrastic poem entitled "Drowning Hylas," inspired by John William Waterhouse's painting Hylas and the Nymphs.

**
 
memento mori - a scene carrying the seeds of its own destruction
 
           a three course dinner served in vignettes
 
i starter
 
I dream I'm in a dining room
walls stained carmine
with cochineal extract
 
neo classical symbols flow
across the walls
rams' skulls replaced
by ebony deer heads
with gilded horns
 
delicate porcelain adorns the table
patterned with a tree's lacy tracery
spidery branches spreading
like ink slowly seeping across paper
capillaries drawing it from a brush bristle,
water dripping through silty sand
 
a cornucopia of riches
spills from the table top
there's a banquet for all the senses
it's everywhere, including on the floor
 
ii main course
 
stags to the right of me
stag beetles to the left
I'm stuck here in the middle -
what kind of febrile world is this?
 
the foxes seem to smile
holding their own court
delighted by the cunning ploys
as they watch the drama unfold
 
this space is familiar yet not
not just my hackles rise
it's a scene of tooth and claw
fangs are bared
 
the hunters sit among the hunted
nothing is quite at it seems
life, death - both part of a dream
 
all around a subtle scuttling is sounding
many tiny insect feet move
antennae, pincers waving
tasting the air, sampling the food
 
I hear insidious burrowing noises
munch and crunch of chitinous jaws
decay's rife amongst all this life
 
iii dessert
 
the tiny creatures are bringing it
they know much more about community
their special roles in the ant's nest
the cohesion of the hive mind
 
what place in all this for beauty?
why do the butterflies shimmer so much?
there's an iridescent gleam of the beetle shell
a light glinting off a deep brown eye
the soft velvet of a furry body
mirrored in a peach's skin
 
nature has its own chaos
Mandelbrot recurrence of complexity
patterns emerge, form, reform
instincts driving behaviours
 
cycles run on an endless mobius loop
creation, nurture, destruction
new growth will arise
from decomposition
 
and in this room-scene-dream
every item curated
perfectly placed
to remind us humans
of our vanitas
 
memento mori
 
Emily Tee
 
Emily Tee writes poetry and flash fiction. She has had pieces published inThe Ekphrastic Review and for its challenges, and elsewhere online, and in print in some publications by Dreich, in Poetry Scotland and in several poetry anthologies. She lives in the UK.
 
**
 
To Jennifer Angus Regarding View from The Grasshopper and the Ant, and Other Stories.
 
Wall bizarre but apropos
stands behind your strange tableau
--  creatures, as they were, preserved
gathered as if being served
 
--  all, perhaps, to celebrate
triumph over lesser fate  --
here immortal as the art
yielding wisdom they impart,
 
stilled to ably represent
life surviving by descent
chained as both the beast and feast,
links that live by links deceased
 
using instinct to sustain
birth and nurture to remain
overcoming all but that
striking down the habitat
 
giving them the time and place
reproducing lets them chase
role fulfilled in living course
man and nature steer by force
 
planned and random leaving trail
those unable to prevail
mark behind, as fear evolved,
truth of future unresolved.
 
Portly Bard
 
Old man. Ekphrastic fan.
 
Prefers to craft with sole intent...
of verse becoming complement...
...and by such homage being lent...
ideally also compliment.
 
Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise
for words but from returning gaze
far more aware of fortune art
becomes to eyes that fathom heart.
 
**
 
Reflections
            Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece.
            —Ralph Waldo Emerson, from the essay, Nature.
 
And the fugitive hunter had the last laugh, gangly rangers in white trucks charging in, clouds of white dust rising like white-rhino ghosts behind them. The old one with white hair and a pistol picked grapes off the platter, his troops cradling, carrying out the stiff game, like new fathers hold their first babies. Brown and white fur stuck to their green tunics and the oriental rugs, and mud off their black boots made a trail through the house as they searched for the poacher, rifles up, black barrels poking into the empty rooms. A left-behind cat under the table hissed, and one man pissed himself, his green trousers darker on one leg. The old one with the white hair, pistol on the table, laughed and spit grape seeds on the rug. When they were done, all the heads and bodies gone, sparrows flew through the left-open door, ate the grape seeds and nested in the holes in the walls, and when the house burned to the ground only the rats that had chewed the wires got out. The old ranger read it in a paper later and thought of Hemingway, how the writer always shot more than he could eat, and how the game was too heavy for a gangly, barefoot boy to hump alone.
 
Robert E. Ray 

Robert E. Ray is a retired public servant. His poetry has been published by Rattle, Beyond Words International Literary Magazine, Wild Roof Journal, The Ekphrastic Review and in four poetry anthologies. Robert lives in coastal Georgia. 
 
**
 
In Pursuit of Patterns

Hosting a Christmas feast for forest animals
As the high priestess of the Mother of Beauty,
The Insect Lady pours more heart and art
Into designing walls than what’s on the table.
She serves her Goddess by telling the stories
That she insists must be told at whatever price.
 
She knows each insect pays a horrendous price
Of no less than life. She would cause no animals
To die for an unworthy cause. There are stories,
However, of their own species’ unknown beauty
Some must be sacrificed to put on the table.
Thus vulnerably she defends her ethics of art.
 
From afar we adore the Victorian decorative art
But frown at the artist coming near, At what price
Have you come by those? She knuckles the table,
Scarcely disturbing equanimity of the animals,
None of them are endangered, then adds, beauty
Is endangered. We neglect to value its stories.
 
We teach children to learn from the ants in the story,
Never the grasshopper. We dismiss his idling art.
We deny some some species their right to beauty.
For these farmed specimens I pay no higher price 
Than do these hapless ambassadors of animals.
And indigenous collectors put bread on the table
 
Because I buy from them. Pastries on the table 
Are plastic, the insects all real. The stories
May be made up, allegorical, but the animals
are losing habitats in the actual world. Art
Awakens great awareness for a small price,
Reveals from hideous things hidden beauty.
 
In jungle nymphs and giant titans dwells beauty;
A magpie shows that in the meticulous table
Of contents of its baubled nest. Life’s price
Is a difficult topic. Lives with no magic stories
are swept up and thrown away as beneath art,
As poor things without a culture, dumb animals.
 
Cochineal blood is the price of the peach beauty 
Of this wall. Under it, animals round the table
have a symposium on their own stories of art.
 
Lucie Chou
 
Lucie Chou is an ecopoet working in mainland China. Currently an undergraduate majoring in English language and literature, she is also interested in the ecotone between ekphrasis and ecopoetics. Her work has appeared in the Entropy magazine, the Black Earth Institute Blog, the Tiny Seed Journal website, The Ekphrastic Review, and in the Plant Your Words Anthology published by Tiny Seed Press. A poem is forthcoming in from Tofu Ink Arts, both in print and online. She has published a debut collection of ecopoetry, Convivial Communiverse, with Atmosphere Press. She hikes, gardens, and studies works of natural history by Victorian writers with gusto.
 
**
 
Guests
 
Who need no invitation
the first to build and excavate
here before we softer things
many jointed, spurred and winged
armed with jaws and poison stings
intricate, opulent
stuff of nightmare
stuff of dreams
alive on leaf and blood
and nectar treasure
sipped from the flower’s
dainty lip–ants and bees
in hives and hills
beetles jeweled
gilt and vermilion
blue and green
dancing mantids
In showgirl finery
moths like painted angels
crowds of locusts and cicadas
singing in the trees
engines of decay
and resurrection
appetites all life depends on
trading sweetness for pollen
inspiring bloom
to fruit and seed
there’d be no feast without them
 
Mary McCarthy 
 
Mary McCarthy is a retired Registered Nurse who has always been a writer. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic World, edited by Lorette C. Luzajic, The Plague Papers, edited by Robbi Nester, and recent issues of Gyroscope, 3rd Wednesday, Caustic Frolic, the Blue Heron Review, and Verse Virtual. Her collection How to Become Invisible will come out from Kelsay early next year.
 
 
**
 
Banquet of Beasts
 
A Duplex Poem, after Jericho Brown
 
With garish abundance a table is set. Above preside the heads of state
who with solemn stares officiate.
 
Eden’s garden is garbed in green when humans begin to officiate.
Remembrance banners hang in red, for the blood sacrifice others shed.
 
And while they plot and machinate, gift medals for blood sacrifice,
the dam has breached and scours land, and with it women and the men.
 
Children reach up stubby hands, as do the women and the men,
soon all are gone, swept to never neverland.
 
Extra limbs and strength to swim keeps beasts from never neverland.
A few have found the laden table then spitting cats commence to fight.
 
The serpent twists in sly delight as hissing cats commence to fight.
Immobile all the others stand, frozen in their silent fright.  
 
Men rule beasts and beasts make men, the rest inactive in their fright.
How long will tables burgeon full, watched over by the heads of state?
 
Nancy Sobanik
 
Nancy Sobanik graduated from the University of Connecticut and is a registered nurse who discovered her love of writing in the last three years. Publication includes Verse-Virtual June 2023; Sparks of Calliope, March 17, 2023; Triggerfish Critical Review Issue # 29, Jan. 2023, and upcoming in Sheila-Na-Gig Summer 2023 and One Art Poetry, July 15, 2023. Other selections of her poems can be found on poetcollectives.org. She is active in the Maine Poets Society. 
 
**
 
Closer
 
These kids are not behaving pinned
To their seats may we go now
A grown-ups dinner table
Ever so boring
I’m not hungry I don’t like
my liver pasties
 
Arranging man and ant
How it sparks my belly
With a wonderful urge
A taste for the immaculate a
Craving for captivation
And ant and ant and ant
In mesmerizing pattern
So beautiful, translucent
The ephemeral flight
Pressed down so softly
 
It’s in a story we come
Together we are
Man and ant
Strangely enstrangled where
Nature excites us
Closer come closer but
Outside of these boxes
Off the wall
Running, rooting
Ever so boring
Away from us
 
Closer come closer then
Let us delight you
Excite your foxes, content your cicadas
Paint our bodies as you choose
Set us up for dancing in mid air
Let us swarm and crawl
Stage us in a world unnamed
To burst and germinate,
To rot and decay, to turn to dust and
Sail with the eastern winds
Disperse and bind again
Turn us real time into butterfly
A centerpiece for you to exhibit
 
Anything but one more minute in the bell jar
Dying of curiosity, time ticking away
Kids and cubs, they need to stir
 
But halfway up life’s sleeve I am
Enchanted by this tale
Its silenced beauty calls to me
Nature transcended, the endgame of man
So much life dominated so
Head over heels
My touch of ankle laid bare
Victorian sublime
 
Stien Pijp
 
Stien Pijp lives east of the river IJssel, in Gelderland, The Netherlands. Some years ago she and her family moved there to a house in the woods. As a dreamy urban person she experienced nature to be quite unnatural to her and seeks to connect with it ever since. She works as a language therapist and wrote a dissertation about the search for meaning in conversations with people who lost language due to brain damage. She reads stories and poetry of friends and sometimes writes a poem herself. 
 
** 
 
So How Was Your Thanksgiving?
 
asks nearly every neighbour, coworker, or street vendor
this time of year. I shrug it off with, Oh, the usual: turkey,
pumpkin pie, and waiting to see who will be the first one
roasted at the table. They laugh. I don’t. But sarcasm
usually buys me another year of privacy. They’d never
believe the truth.
 
In college, I went home with my roommate one year. First
time I’d ever heard of a children’s table. Five siblings
and cousins under age eight were seated there. I almost
pulled my chair over to join them. You’ve never eaten
at a children’s table? they asked. Only child, I explained.
 
Couldn’t admit I was the only child EVER in the house.
No wonder people think me odd. I learned my people
skills, from table manners to how to speak, from the
psychiatrist next door and his patient wife. They even
sent me to school, but told me I could never invite a friend
over to play. Obviously, I was just one of their subjects.
They were the researchers, hoping to learn what?
 
It was quite unbelievable in its way. How did they get
carnivores, foxes, raccoons, otters, snakes, and various
wild cats, to live side by side with pheasants, squirrels, and
me? Was this an experimental Eden? I never heard
or witnessed a single attack. All night long, I laid there
unprotected, my five-year-old head on a pillow beside
whatever new fur baby was brought in to stay. How
was I added to the menagerie?
 
Every year meant one new diner at the table and one new
taxidermied head on the wall. I began to fear that my head
might be the next trophy. Instead of asking questions,
I moved to the opposite coast, changed my name, and use
a pseudonym, too.
 
Last week a fan letter arrived from the mad doctor, as I think
of him now. He used my pen name, but I was still unnerved
when he said, I wish I had half your wild imagination. I think
of your stories as a macabre version of Winnie-the-Pooh
for adults.
 
Alarie Tennille
 
Alarie Tennille was a pioneer coed at the University of Virginia, where she earned her degree in English, Phi Beta Kappa key, and black belt in Feminism. Alarie received the first editor’s choice Fantastic Ekphrastic Award from The Ekphrastic Review, and in 2022, her latest book, Three A.M. at the Museum, was named Director’s Pick for the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art gift shop. [ alariepoet.com ]
 
**
 
THE TRICK
                               (on The Ant and The Grasshopper, Angus, USA)
 
      It was his best trick, pinning the grasshopper
      with his thumb, and taking my hand
 
       to its brittle legs rasped, surprised,
       against a lack of lines,
 
       and in my empty palm it spit, lost a leg.
       I remember the grasshoppers, my grandfather's shills,
 
        the quick loss of moveable parts and my alarm
        at dismemberment --  wings, lost, legs, lost --
 
        or milagros, little miracles, the charms
        made by mestizos, arms and fists and eyes
 
        conjured, offered for the saving of some lost part
        or strung in a kind of native rosary,
 
        dull silver and wearable, their worn wealth
        the magic and half-death of damaged disappearance:
 
        Summer, my grandfather waiting in the portico,
        my grandfather emptying his pockets.
 
        I thought I'd find what wasn't there,
        the light in his long fingers.
 
Laurie Newendorp
 
Laurie Newendorp lives and writes in Houston.  "The Trick," an early poem, was a part of her Master's Thesis, Crossing Time Lines/ The Grandfather Journey (1992), poems that revealed her fascination with her Grandfather's tricks, many of which had, for her, a magical quality.
                 
**
 
am i the only one
 
weeping
 
over the loss 
of the beautiful 15000
 
am i the only one
mourning 
their massacre
 
their capture
their dying
their mounting
 
am i the only one
grieving 
their stolen 
lives
their exotic
habitats
their resplendency
 
am i the only one
wishing
the beautiful 15000 were
sipping
mating
pollinating 
 
am i the only one
 
lamenting
 
the terrible sacrifice 
of the beautiful 15000
 
the terrible impact
on our planet
 
Donna-Lee Smith 
 
Donna-Lee Smith loves and respects the insect world. She recognizes the beauty of bugs and that people in cities want to see them. She also recognizes that the Indigenous folk who capture bugs do so because there is a lucrative market for the beautiful 15000. She also recognizes that these folk earn a mere pittance compared to the middleman. 
 
**
 
Post-Production

Not until you’re stuffed, does the dinner
party really make sense. And what’s
more off the wall than an unsettled
 
            guest list to make the bright room
appear a great room, appear a pair
of paws, or as an aside,
 
            the fine line between interior 
design and the imagined
interiority only happens 
 
            after the dessert is served,
after the racoon is seated,
post joke, but not yet
 
afterhours. The obscene
            will only be obvious
in retrospect.
 
Jeanne Morel and Anthony Warnke
 
Jeanne Morel is the author of three chapbooks, I See My Way to Some Partial Results (Ravenna Press), Jackpot (Bottlecap Press), and That Crossing Is Not Automatic (Tarpaulin Sky Press). She holds an MFA from Pacific University and has been nominated for a Pushcart in both poetry and fiction. Her recent work has appeared in Black Sunflowers, Crab Creek Review, Fugue, and Great Weather for MEDIA. She is a gallery guide at the Frye Art Museum and co-facilitates the Columbia City Writing Circle with Anthony Warnke.
 
Anthony Warnke ’s poetry has appeared in Cimarron Review, North American Review, Salt Hill, Sentence, Sixth Finch, and Sugar House Review, among other journals. He also publishes scholarly work promoting access and equity at two-year colleges. He earned his Master’s degree in English from Western Washington University and his MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Washington, Seattle. He teaches writing at Green River College and lives in Seattle, where he co-facilitates the Columbia City Writing Circle.
 
**
 
Inside
 
the uterine walls of the dining room
                                                               time appears to stop
                                                                                                   except even now
                                                                                                                                 clusters of fruit ripen
 
fur rots in thickets 
                                like helixes of pine needles swept to the side 
                                                                                                               the rug grows invisible
 
the tablecloth yellows just as teeth do
                                                                   taxidermy is a myth
                                                                                                      the doe cranes her gentle neck                 
not forever
                   look, what I’m saying is insects are flying off the walls
                                                                                                                 in imperceptible gales
 
the air repopulates
                                  the porcelain is turning into a variant of sea glass
                                                                                                                       the animals cycle round                
 
and become
                       not quite their wildest breathing selves again 
                                                                                                 not the racoon or crooked-toed pheasant        
but maybe in a billion years
                                                 they emerge as you or a dream you had  
 
Carolyn Wilsey
 
Nature’s intricacies inspire Carolyn Wilsey to write poems. She holds a BA in American Literature from Middlebury College and an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. Carolyn's poems appear in Pretty Owl Poetry, Rogue Agent, Stirring, Eclectica, Pigeon Pages, West Marin Review, Quiet Lightning, and other publications. In 2020, one of her poems was nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology.
 
 
 

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Vital Fluids

(after John Bingley Garland)
​
Time breathes its secrets into stone.
Ancestry is full of mirrors and ancient riddles.
The stilled silhouette of memories is amplified by the blood of silence and lies.
The wounds of suffering are surrounded by healers casting spells into a web of stories
Everywhere is within seeking distance.
Are you our Mother?
Who knows why or if?

Kerfe Roig

A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new.  Follow her explorations on her blogs,https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/  (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/.