Dear Writers and Readers,

We had an extraordinary response to this particular artwork. Clearly both the artwork and the subject struck a major chord. The thrill for me of reading numerous takes after the same painting, and seeing it through so many eyes and souls, never fades. Each poem and story gives me a different window into the human imagination, and makes me see the artwork more fully.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of you writers, whether or not your work was selected this challenge, for participating in this amazing experience. We aim to choose a wide and generous selection, but cannot include all the worthy works we receive each time.

​The challenges remain a popular, essential part of The Ekphrastic Review, a consistent and growing aspect of the journal among so many projects and opportunities. It is an honour to read your entries every session. Every writer who participates in these challenges, once or always, is an integral part of this amazing community that we are building together.

May I invite you to join us in the many exciting opportunities ongoing and ahead. There are so many ways you can get involved. We have a book club, thanks to Barbara Krasner who hosts them. There have been two sessions so far and the next event is in three months. These quarterly ekphrastic book club gatherings are held on zoom, and involve a different book on art each time with rousing discussion. Click on the book club link in the overhead menu for more information.

We now have a monthly reading series. Join us for July's session on zoom to hear some of your favourite ekphrastic writers read their work. These sessions involve five writers each time and community conversation after the reading. Click on Electric Ekphrasis Reading Series in the menu above to sign up for the free monthly readings.

The Heaven Eleven marathon is coming up very soon. Don't miss out on the epic event of the year. Our fifth annual ekphrastic marathon celebrates our eleventh birthday! This event is intense and exhilarating, a day of total creativity. Writers participate independently from all over the world, connecting for support, community and inspiration in a FB group. I'll be there all day cheerleading you along and answering questions. Click on Heaven Eleven in the sidebars to register.

Finally, if you haven't discovered The Ekphrastic Academy yet, sign up today for an upcoming zoom course. We offer single session zooms and longer courses on various artists, themes, and writer's craft subjects. These workshops are about creativity, connection, and conversation. We look at and discuss art together and do generative writing exercises with art. Sessions ahead include Ekphrastic Journaling, Chagall, photographer Tina Modotti, exploring darker themes with Night in My Veins, and our monthly Ekphrasis Anonymous sessions, a generative writing event for ekphrastic addicts. Click on the Academy link in the menu above.

Here's to a fabulous summer.

Happy reading and writing!

love,
​Lorette

​The Dreams of the Associated Realities

So many times I am awakened to sanitized dreams
real dreams that quietly drift away
from my mind at night
can sanitize the dark

True dreams that show understanding
can continue into the daylight
very soon the day awakens the mind
and can create the freeze from the dream

Chloe Hougan

Chloe Hougan is a painter and jewelry maker from Stoughton, Wisconsin. Using brilliant colour, powerful pattern, and poetic titles, she reflects abstractly, bravely, and boldly upon both her inner and outer worlds, capturing them with distinctive vibrance. She is non-verbal and autistic, and although she only recently discovered creative writing, she enjoys it tremendously. She has been previously published in The Ekphrastic Review.

**

​Being the Moon
 
We take turns being the lantern
for each other.
Today your cheeks glow
like the full moon,
the road before us illuminated
by your glowing, lunar care.
You look down, listen,
gently gather up any fragile words
that have fallen from my mouth,
ask about how the days have collected
at my feet,
about my parents’ health,
about the things we carry that remain
cloaked by busy days.
 
My neck welcomes the moonglow
now floating all around us.
Your light absorbs my crimson; 
my crimson has turned you a dusty rose.
We walk in the biosphere 
of loving friendship, 
where green leaves flourish
and everything drinks in rain and nourishment.
 
Next month, my hands will emanate a healing light,
as I draw you close for a hug on our walk.
Vines will grow all around us
on the path.
I will catch what falls for you
in our well-worn basket of knowing.
I will listen.
I will carry.
I will care.
No
one
person
can be the moon.
 
Cristina M. R. Norcross

Cristina M. R. Norcross is the founding editor of the online poetry journal, Blue Heron Review.  Author of ten poetry collections, a multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, and an Eric Hoffer Book Award nominee, her latest book is The Poetry Apothecary (Kelsay Books, 2024).  Cristina was featured in the Poem-A-Day series for the Academy of American Poets in 2021.  You can find her work in the James Crews anthology, The Wonder of Small Things (Storey Publishing, 2023) and the anthology series boxed set, A Boxful of Poetry (Storey Publishing, 2024).  www.cristinanorcross.com

**

Duplex:  This Old World Has Always Been Ending

This old world has always been ending.
That is why we walk to work on two feet.

That is why we once crawled on hands and feet.
Those were the days when we had nowhere to go.

Days when we have nowhere to go will return.
But now there is the factory, the office.

And the factory has nothing to offer.
And the office is not really a factor.

There is so much we really should factor in.
Sadly, we have too little capacity.

Because too many have too little to eat.
Why did we bother to walk, to crawl, to swim?

Why did we ever bother to evolve?
This old world has always been ending.

Rose Menyon Heflin

Originally from rural, southern Kentucky, Rose Menyon Heflin is a poet, writer, and visual artist living in Wisconsin. Her award-winning poetry has been published over 250 times in outlets spanning five continents, and she has published memoir and flash fiction pieces. She has had a free verse poem choreographed and danced, an ekphrastic memoir piece featured in a museum art exhibit, and two haiku published in a gumball machine. Among other venues, her poetry has appeared in Deep South Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, and San Antonio Review. An OCD sufferer since childhood, she strongly prefers hugging trees instead of people. 

**

​What the Body Does

Two women, smeared into their own faces.
Schjerfbeck knew: you stop seeing yourself
somewhere around the third winter of the bus,
the dark before, the dark after.

One of them has put on red. Warpaint.
The mirror watched, unconvinced.
She did it anyway — that small performance
the body enacts before the body goes.

The other has closed her eyes.
Not sleep. Something older.
The way a person disappears inside the going,
the destination unremarkable, the motion

enough. “Time to do the donuts.”
The coffee lukewarm, the window black,
the self somewhere back at the house,
still in the chair, still possible.

You learn to send just the shape of yourself --
the coat, the hands, the reasonable mouth --
into the cold machinery of another day.
What remains learns to wait.

Lynne Kemen

Lynne Kemen is the author of Shoes for Lucy (SCE Press, 2023) and More Than a Handful (Woodland Arts Editions, 2020). Her work has appeared in One Art, The Ekphrastic Review, MacQueen's Quinterly, and elsewhere. She received a 2024 Pushcart Prize nomination and serves as Editor/Interviewer for The Blue Mountain Review. She lives and writes in an 1830s farmhouse in rural Delaware County, New York, where she shares her property with a murder of crows, one of whom she has named Edgar Allen Crow.

**

The Palette Knife of Despair

The factory girls plow through the doors.
They punch in with their time tickets,
hang up their coats, sit at their sewing stations
and think about their self-portraits on the verso.

They punch in with their time tickets,
their faces still staunched by weather and worry.
They think about their self-portraits on the verso,
the girls they wish they could be:

Their faces no longer staunched by weather and worry,
fat-cheeked and rouged, hair coiffed by professionals,
the girls they wish they could be
if only their families had money, if only, if only.

Fat-cheeked and rouged, hair coiffed, professionals,
but palette knife scratches their skin, erases their dreams.
If only these girls had money, if only, if only,
they could lift their eyes from the throat plate.

Palette knife scratches their skin, erases their dreams.
Their sunken eyes reflect in machine’s metal.
Unable to lift from the throat plate.
Money only comes from the needle, the thread, the tread.

Their sunken eyes reflect in machine’s metal.
The factory girls, no way out.
Money only comes from the needle, the threat, the tread.
They hang up their coats, sit at their sewing stations.

Barbara Krasner

Barbara Krasner's ekphrastic poetry collections include The Wanderers (Shanti Arts, 2026), Insomnia: Poems after Lee Krasner (dancing girl press, 2026), and The Night Watch (Kelsay Books, 2025). She feels fortunate she was able to view Seeing Silence: The Paintings of Helene Schjerfbeck at The Met in January 2026. Visit Barbara's website at www.barbarakrasner.com.

**

Women Working

Hardly halting, Heavy hearting, never a moment passing slow
Industry increasing, indeed injuring, protections long forgot, forgoed 
Looms lurching, leaders lurking, closing every bright window
Shuttles shifting, shifts stacking, missing the children whilst they grow
Treadles turning, toes toiling, walking here through rain and snow

Women working, wonder wintering, watching wefts pass to and fro 
Employees earning, economy expanding, uplifting unknown politicos 

Women working, window washing, putting on domestic show
Offspring objecting, often obscuring, frequently found here undertow
Rest reclusing, routines racing, he wants a trip to lovers’ row
Kitchen keeping, knot knitting, life is labor this she knows

Julia Harr​

Julia Harr is a narrative practitioner who lives in Queens, NY. She is happiest browsing the many art collections of NYC and writing shorts and poems in response. Professionally, you can find her practicing narrative therapy and offering narrative medicine workshops to other healthcare providers. www.story-ethic.com
​
**

​White Death

Factory air, thick,
black— coughed
into the night.

Are you the girl
with blonde hair,
who helped mother?

Face lowered,
eyes downcast,
bearing the weight

of disapproval,
even in submission.
Even if I catch

the shadow on your face,
it does not bring
father back;

his last breath
hangs in the night air.

David Hershhorn

David (he/him) is an Ohio poet drawn to unsettling verse as well as editor for the forthcoming horror poetry journal Fear in Dust. David holds a Bachelor of Arts from The College of Wooster in Philosophy where he was awarded the John F. Miller prize. When not reading or writing, David enjoys boardgames, playing the baroque flute, and listening to music. David is a proud member of the Horror Writers Association, Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, and the Academy of American Poets.

**

the caste of office angels

we’ve become angels
on wings floating in our modern city
silent hands pull strings and 
arms extend and 
legs retreat 
footsteps whisper 
leather dreams
billboards beg for believers
dark sirens no rocks at all
we weave gears and sparking trams
to make our robes and jewelry
walk with me on concrete rivers
we skate through morning and night and
sing to the new gods in glass and steel ribbed 
towers climb higher and higher
so no one ever needs to
let down their hair
ever again

mike sluchinski 

mike sluchinski reads vonnegut's harrison bergeron religiously and got hooked on ekphrasis. grateful to the ekphrastic review and other great journals for getting it right when so many others just couldn't get it. can't get this hook out of my lip.

**

​Instructions for Perrine
  
Girl, don’t weep and moan.  Lean over that soapstone sink and scratch the blood from her frocks.  
Emerge from that cobwebbed basement and bleach the linens on the line.
 
Girl, don’t covet her rubies.  Just dust the vanity and tidy the bedroom.  Stash your dreams of luxe 
with Madame’s baubles.
 
Girl, don’t feed your hunger stones with raspberries from her ice box.  Wipe the counters and 
scrub the floor.  Lay down your longing.
 
Perrine my girl, you transcend service.  You must crack open your geode soul, release the saffron 
breath of the crocosmia flower, and tend to your unfurling spirit.   

Allison Connolly ​

Allison Connolly revels in the challenge of telling a story in one hundred words.  Her work has been published in The Ekphrastic Review and in scholarly journals.  She is Professor of French at Centre College and splits her time between the U.S. and Europe.

**

Facing the Day
 
Caps with tight straps
cover hair or bald heads.
Alabaster Woman looks inside herself
with shaded lavender eyes.
A woman of fire
faces what the other avoids.
Red Woman’s neck is a blade/
lips blood red/eyes blackened.
There she is,
despite the darkness heavy around them,
Red as lava
Red as a lover
Red as a forest fire
that turns aside,
burns out,
for no one.

Meg Senuta
 
Meg Senuta: "A graduate of Grub Street’s yearlong intensive Memoir Incubator, Pushcart nominee, and finalist for Fourth Genre’s Steinberg Memorial Nonfiction Award, my words have appeared in Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, and Cognoscenti, and were featured in Wake Forest University’s Narrative Medicine’s series and Tell-All Boston. I have served as patient advocate on research grants for inflammatory breast cancer; patient/actor to teach medical students how to deliver bad news; and mentor for newly-diagnosed cancer patients at Dana Farber Cancer Institute. I studied traditional textiles in Sweden, and learned weaving and spinning from a Scottish folksinger. I have actually used tenterhooks."

**

What Lies Beneath

We, the under-represented,
all appear similar. With blank
stares into a fixed destiny,
we seem colourless, voiceless,
featureless, yet essential to the cause,

but under our assembly line skin
lies a dancer, a musician, a chef─
dreams waiting for an opportunity
to bust from this factory floor prison.
We identify this as wishful thinking

until she arrives with tinged lips
and a non-compliant attitude,
a welcome addition of colour and hope
to the grayness of monotony.
It’s clear, for her, this stop is temporary.

Her arrival alters the drudgery vibe,
every downcast worker vies for a spot
to toil next to this living revelation
of grander possibility and potential;
we feel rebellious change in the air.

Elaine Sorrentino

Elaine Sorrentino, author of Belly Dancing in a Brown Sweatsuit (Kelsay Books, 2025) has been published in journals such as Quartet Journal, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Gyroscope Review, Sparks of Calliope, Sheila-Na-Gig, Poetry Porch, The Ekphrastic Review, and Haikuniverse. She is facilitator of the Duxbury Poetry Circle in Duxbury, MA.

**

Twins

Twins?
no, we are not even sisters,
only our hands do the same thing
tackling eleven wool spinning machines
24/seven for the last ten years,
as we just came of age,
but instead of soul search
this post- and pre-war age
pushed a different future for us,
regardless God’s incredible plans.
 
Of course, we know how to spin by hand,
but the master wants it fast and fine
and yes, all the fun is gone:
no boys around so we signal our joy
by dropping the spindle down
giving them a chance to
pick it up and touch our fingers.
 
Now it’s just the noise of metal and brass
pricking our years
while eyes stay attached
to the hubris of details
which sooner or later
stick begotten as the yarn
of our living, or better – surviving.

Ekaterina Dukas
 
Ekaterina Dukas writes poetry as a pilgrimage to meaning and her poems are often honoured by TER and its challenges. Her collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europa Edizioni, 2021.

**

Factory Workers on the Way to Work
            
forward to what
work
forward from what
past

they breathed  
the red & black air
            
their masks grew
from sand & ash
      
death & sadness
daily knowing
yet unknown

Sister Lou Ella

Sister Lou Ella has a master’s degree in theology and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer.  Her poems have appeared in America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and new verse news and in five anthologies. She was twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015. (Press 53.) Five poems from the book, set to music by James Lee III were performed by soloist opera singer Susanna Phillips, principal clarinetist Anthony McGill of the New York Philharmonic, and Grammy® nominated pianist Mayra Huang.

**

We Wake in the Dark

We wake in the dark, my sister and me, not needing to see as our work clothes are draped across a chair, ready to drape over our shoulders. Our toes feel for the floor, our sturdy shoes shaped by our shapeless stockings. Every morning the same, save for the sabbath, when we sleep until first light. Do not despair for us. We bring home the rent and pride in our labour. Our neighbours toil with us, making wonderful works for the world to use. We dance in bright dresses on Saturday night. Our faces are smiles then; our shoes made of satin. Our suitors are many.

Despair not for us:
We labour with our neighbours
in community.

Donna Reiss

Writer, editor, teacher, bookmaker, and mixed media/paper artist, Donna lives in Greenville, South Carolina, where she is a member of the Greenville Center for Creative Arts, the Guild of American Papercutters, and the Poetry Society of South Carolina. Follow her on Instagram @dreissart

**

​My Big Sister
 
She was brave, 
adventurous,
a front-runner in her time,
a lady in red. 
She was my world- 
my protector, 
my confidant. 
I looked up to her,
admired her strength,
trusted her with my life, 
my heart,
my soul.
No matter where I moved, 
she came to me-
came to ground me, 
came to comfort me, 
came to remind me that 
she was always there. 
Things are different now.
I cannot forget 
her screaming voice,
her angry face,
her harsh words.
I cannot let my heart 
get close again
lest it be scorched, 
ridiculed,
betrayed.
There are no words or actions 
that can change things-
we only walk together as siblings,
side by side,
in stony silence.
                                    
Lynn Bastoni

​Lynn Bastoni began writing poetry more than a decade ago as a unique way to teach her middle school students important life lessons. As a former middle school principal, she had many opportunities to shape attitudes, cultivate empathy and affect the choices of the adolescent children in her charge. Her book, Bullying, The Remedy Lies Within was published in 2020 and is a testimony to her commitment to educating through the use of poetry. Lynn lives in Duxbury, Massachusetts and is a long-time member of the Duxbury Poetry Circle. Her poetry is often written from the seat of her emotions and reflects her love of the natural world. Rhyming is a particular passion and a well-honed art, but anything goes! 

**
​
Ashes in Their Eyes
 
So you heard of the fire? 
Sisters lost at the 
Triangle Waist Company. 
We go about our business
at the factory,
our hair bobbed and angled
so bobbins won’t catch 
tresses like threads
wound around spools
of commerce.
The darkness of our eyes,
not from ashes thumbnailed
on our foreheads to remind
us of Lent and dust, but pools
of kohl under our eyes 
filled with lint that disclose
lost sleep and sadness. 
So you heard of the fire?
Could that happen to us?
Doors locked with no exit,
latched with locks like padlocks
on the hope chests of their hearts. 
Scraps of shirtwaist cottons 
and linens charred and trapped.
The tatting of needles.
The tapping on tables,
keeping pace with fingers
as they raced, unable 
to unlock the locks.
Confined behind wooden
door posts of death.
So you heard of the fire?
Women for hire. 
 
Cynthia Dorfman

The dark eyes of the women in the Schjerfbeck painting made Cynthia Dorfman think of the fire at the Triangle Waist Company in New York where 146 workers, 123 of them women and girls, died. The fire was during Lent in 1911 and this image was painted in 1922, but Cynthia speculated on what these factory women might be thinking in their circumstance. She lives in Maryland, US ,and writes regularly with the Driftless Writing Center based in Wisconsin. 

**

Faces
 
The gaze is fixed upon the way,
The way, that is ever the same,
Ever open,
Never showing anything beyond its emptiness,
Always uncertain.
 
The gaze stems from a teeming pool,
The pool of being:
Of want,
Of yearning,
Of wounds,
Of resignation,
Of nothingness.
 
Do we hear the footfalls
Of souls upon smoke?
 
G. I. Sheriff
 
Besides a substantial contribution over the years of poems, essays and stories to various literary journals, and anthologies, G. I. Sheriff has published two books of poetry, The Dew Between The Petals And Other Poems and One Hundred Poems Of Aesthesia. @ ghalibiqbalsheriff8314  is his YouTube channel, that features his poetry videos.  He lives in Bengaluru, India.

**

Homeward Bound, Unbroken

Helena and Elli no longer smile.
They shove their short hair
beneath casket caps.
Move together as comrades
through dark Finnish streets.
Weary with fatigue from factory fires, 
painstaking handiwork.

Their ghostly faces
hide their fierce determination,
their willingness to fight 
for a better world.
Silent women,
unafraid of sacrifice,
unafraid of the world’s cold treatment.

Barbara Edler

Barbara Edler is a midwestern poet who enjoys writing poetry and flash fiction. She appreciates the challenge of writing to art and the bi-weekly challenges offered by The Ekphrastic Review. Her poem "Homeward Bound, Unbroken" is a nod to the Finnish women who were unafraid to break established gender roles and worked fearlessly to create a better world. Edler's poetry has been published in a variety of anthologies such as Encore Prize Poems 2025, The Cities of the Plains, Words that Mend and a variety of literary journals.

**

Soul Sisters
 
For years we walked.
Together.
Holding each other.
Secure.
One night this tall, bald strange man
stared at you through the window
of her house. 
We grabbed two knives,
stood ready behind the door.

We kissed two boys 
under the oleander bushes
at the Costa Brava.
We took many trains,
we left our hurts in each other’s arms.
 
We shared a suitor, our mothers...
I stood stiffly at the dance,
while she took his hand and sailed
into the Foxtrot,
whispered later behind her manicured
hand that he got too close.
Many a night we sipped champagne
and giggled until the first light.
 
We solved the world’s problems.
Bitched about our brothers.
Got old together.
 
At first, I didn’t notice:
she faded slowly,
her mind curled in on itself.
But she always knew
that I had somehow been
a part of her.

Rose Mary Boehm

Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels, short stories, eight poetry collections and one chapbook, her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She is a several times Pushcart and a Best of Net nominee. All her books are available on Amazon. Her chapbook, The Matter of Words, was published in June 2025, and a new full-length collection has been slated for publishing at any day now. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/

**

A Sabot Story
 
Liege, in the 19th century industrial revolution 
That region famous for its coal, iron and steel
Known as Europe’s Forge, and a beating heart
Its industry as a participant in an age of steam
Belgium, at the south end of a long coal seam
Where labour unions joined in that early start
In hard working jobs having a lessening appeal
With silent compliance ever the poor solution
 
Coal mining, exclusively as a male occupation
Not revolt, and with safety first and foremost
But many women also played their silent role
In factories, at machines making ammunition
Another early shift before the sun had risen
And as the story goes, sabotage was the goal
A clog in the machine, in reality, not a ghost
As silent female resistance, never capitulation

Howard Osborne

Howard is a UK citizen, retired. Published author of non-fiction reference book, scientific papers and poetry. Interests mainly creative writing (poetry, novel, short stories, songs and scripts), music and travel.​

**

… brazier glow …

​an undisclosed hour on a waking morning 
unidentifiable from any dim indistinct signs 
around which the cold mist mixes with brazier smoke 
disturbed to swirl by passing shapes 
becoming human forms as if emerging from the darker night 
wearing muted colours of orange and lilac 
two human forms distinguishable from the churn 
only by their lighter faces— sombre faces facing the day ahead 
scarfed heads bobbed against the cold 
 
one a jaundice yellow the other a ghostly white 
eyes sunken shadows in skull sockets 
adding to an incorporeal look of 
phantasma eyes tired by shortness of sleep— 
like a shortness of breath even before exertion 
theirs is a hard pill to swallow as they wend 
an already weary way to work in the cold dark 
broken by the brazier they pass often not seeing light of day 
as they toil behind factory doors or underground 
 
returning after sundown with their burden 
of weariness weighing on shoulders 
that have already weighed heavily upon their souls 
the warming glow of a brazier barely felt 
barely noticed even if from one of Dante’s hells 
into which they might be about to descend 
hoping to have the preserve from which they can ascend 
to return to their normality 
passing the brazier once more as its heat through 
the harsh weave of the garments thinning at the neck 

Peter Longden

Peter R Longden grew up in Rotherham, South Yorkshire before moving to Coventry in 1981 for a long career working with young people. Now retired, poetry is a significant part of his life, having started writing poetry over 25 years ago. Still looking to publish a first chapbook, he has had poems published in Yesterday’s Diary. edited by Cathy Cassidy; by 9th O’Bheal Five Words Competition (2022); five poems published by The Ekphrastic Review between June 2024 and May 2026; and two ekphrastic poems in the Wee Sparrow Poetry Press Newsletters in 2024 and 2025. Other poems have been published in local anthologies. Peter is married to Sally with two grown-up boys (and a two-year-old granddaughter).

**

...but Deadly (a Guide to Mimes)

1. Mimes have silence on their side. In a fight, this can cost you.

2. I’m not implying that mimes are dirty fighters. But heckle them at your own risk. After you yell, “Oh, no, I’m trapped inside an invisible box! How will I ever get out?” don’t turn your back. You won’t hear them coming. 

3. When you see a mime, walk away, into the wind, dragging your heavy sack of sarcasm behind you. Find something, anything, real or imagined, to lean against. But don’t piss off a mime.

4. Yesterday you delighted in making that street magician’s composure vanish into thin air. If you’re still itching for fun, and you can’t be dissuaded from antagonizing a mime, get ready. Mimes see the world in black and white. If you impugn their honour, you’re asking for it.

5. Remember, first and foremost, mimes are performers. Acrobats of the dramatic. You may throw a haymaker, maybe blacken a mime’s eye. But watch, while you can, as that mime uses an invisible grapefruit spoon. To scoop out your very real eyes.

Tracy Royce

Tracy Royce’s writing has appeared in The Mackinaw, MacQueen’s Quinterly, ONE ART, and Best Microfiction. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and a Pushcart Prize. She lives in Southern California, where she enjoys hiking and watching Richard Widmark films. Find her on Bluesky.

**

​when the work stops 

- click clack - 
slanted back
stiff walk 
slow marching in 
a day hardly worth waking 
sorrowed eyes 
pale skin 
our bodies theirs 
our minds ripe for taking

- knock knock - 
striking nails 
dyed skin 
palm bleeding on 
my boot so mad I’m shaking 
clenching fists 
numb arm 
stomp aching feet 
“enough, tools down” I call out

- tik tok - 
dropping awls 
raised hands 
the guards come in 
“bring us the owner” we all shout 
the man enters 
smug smile 
pink slips waiting 
brows set we test his clout

Alexandra Fritz 

Alexandra Fritz is based in Los Angeles and roams whenever possible.  Inspired by social justice and the complications of being human, her work searches for dignity in difficult circumstances and the moments that reveal our shared humanity.  

**

The Visitation

It wasn’t the first time that Maura had felt Cindy, although she couldn’t see her, and tried to look away and pretend it was just in her mind.  It was the coldness of the air that could not be ignored.  Brushing against her left cheek, she could feel its icy grasp as if pulling her into the other world as well.  It wasn’t her fault that Cindy died, although she felt guilty.  She had been the passenger, and Cindy had been the one driving when the car went over the bank on a perfectly beautiful morning in the hills of Tennessee. 

“What do you want, Cindy?  I know you are there.  It has been two years now, and I think you should move on.  Are you stuck?”

Cindy’s unrelenting pressure campaign echoed the tone she had also used when confronting Mother.
“What the hell, Mother!  We have been out here in the rain ever since the bus dropped us off three hours ago.”  Maura remembers they pounded on the door and could see their mother moving in the kitchen. Cindy charged almost aggressively toward her Mom when the door finally opened, and Maura ran crying to her room and put on her headphones.

“You girls are lucky to have me for a mother, teaching you responsibility. Maybe next time you will remember to take your house key and not depend on me to open the door.  I am not your servant.” With that, she turned and disappeared into the kitchen.

Maura shook her head to dislodge this memory and sat down on the couch to stare out the window.  Lake Michigan was so still this morning that the clouds looked like they were swimming in the icy water. Gazing at the horizon line always transported her to a frequency where she could talk with Cindy more clearly in her mind.

“I am not stuck.  Ever since Dad walked out of our lives 23 years ago when I was 5, and you were 3, I have tried to be strong for you.  To be your protector.  I see you squandering your life by shrinking until you are now invisible even to yourself. I want to wake you up.  Do you think it is okay that Mom murdered me and tried to kill you too?  Please, Maura, find your voice.”

They had discussed Mother many times since the accident. It seemed plausible that she had known the brakes were defective when she told Cindy to take her car, instead of Cindy’s Volkswagen. It would have seemed forgivable, innocent even, except that Mother hated Cindy for defying her controlling demands from an early age.

“You will have more room if you take my car,” were the last words her mother spoke to Cindy. At the time, it seemed odd because why would Mother care if there was more room, but Maura shook it off like she always did.

This hatred between Mom and Cindy was a looming presence that inhabited their home and interjected itself in every conversation, every interaction. A toxic poison spewed continuously from  Mother’s mouth, except when she talked to the neighbors in that silky voice that arose from her red lipsticked mouth.

After the accident, when Maura was recovering from a broken pelvis and a crushed leg, her mother visited her twice in the two months she was in the hospital.  The first time was to ask her where she should dump Cindy’s ashes, and the next time to tell her she was moving to the Netherlands.

Good riddance, she thought at the time.

These repeating conversations with Cindy were upsetting. She wanted Maura to confront her mother. It was like Cindy could see she had become a hermit, living in this cabin by the lake, working remotely as a grant writer for a non-profit, ordering takeout, and binge-watching Netflix movies.  Her only interactions were scrolling through Instagram and liking and commenting on strangers' posts.

Maura knew it was dangerous to be visible.

Staring out the plane window, Maura relived her conversation with her mother,. She had hired a private detective who tracked down her mother’s address to a small Dutch village. The detective also discovered that the investigation into the accident had focused on the car's faulty brakes, and the police were beginning to question her mother. 

Somehow, with Cindy's help, she had found a desire to discover the truth and, with trepidation, called the number the detective had given her.  She instantly recognized the fake silky voice when her Mom answered the phone.

“Hello Mother, this is Maura.”  Her voice sounded stronger than she felt as the old fear gripped her.

“Maura!”  Maura could tell her mother was truly shocked to hear her voice.

“I have a plane ticket, and I will be at your house on June 29th if all goes as planned.” 

“What?  You are coming here?  No, don’t come.  Frank would not like it.” 

She already knew from the detective that her mother was living with Frank Barnell and that they both had moved to the Netherlands together.

“I am sorry, Mom, if it makes a problem for you, but I have something very important to ask you.” This was the first time in her life that she had stood up to her mother, and it shocked both of them.

“I do not intend to leave the Netherlands until we talk.  We can meet at a restaurant if that works better for you.”  Maura intentionally closed the door on her mother’s excuses, and it felt strangely delicious.

Maura stirred her cold coffee as she waited at the cozy restaurant in Marken, the one with a view of the water. Relief and anger surged through her as she recognized her mother wasn’t coming.  She should have gone to her house; she had the address.  But coming here had been a first step; maybe it was enough. 

Cindy was sitting here with her, too, though fainter, as if she were disappearing.

Connie Meyer

Connie Meyer lives in Maryland with her husband, Alden, and is discovering a passion for writing after 40 years as a management consultant.  She is always delighted to have new subscribers and readers of her Substack, Dispatch From Planet Earth | Connie Meyer | Substack.  

**

Monday

Monday, the pound and hiss of mechanical melancholy stamped on their souls, birdsong broken by the clunk, snarl and whirr of the workhouse, there is no music to temper the morning trudge, their heads loll, shoes scrape pavement’s dew and glistening flecks, unseen by them, fling themselves to jewelled joy before the shadow of a sole presses them to dry death, they see nothing, they have left their thoughts resting against the plums on the kitchen table, the ruthless cry of the factory’s klaxon flattens their dreams, a thin, fading line reaching back into the folds of their sheets slackens, sleep evaporates, speech evaporates, what is there to say anyway, who could hear it beneath the iron roar, work calls, weariness calls, lives are lost in could’ves, love is absent in the daily tread, they have been soldered in the steel furnace of fierce demand, their screws loosened in the rusting of desire and the remnants of dreams smothered in the piston’s pounding, the murderous peal of stained bells 

There is nothing to lift their heads for, the engineer of human souls choked on the cloggy smog from the sky-scratching smokestacks, the relentless black fog, the black fog that suffocates, the black fog that stains, clouds, lungs and hope sour in a soup of blackness, what life is left when sunrise is a siren song for grim smelting 

release me
she calls
release me
she cries

eyes retreat, sunk in hollow despair

release me
she calls
release me
she cries 

the factory gates open 

Simon Parker
​
Simon Parker is a writer, performer and teacher from London. He is an associate artist of Vocal Point Theatre and runs creative writing and reading groups for the homeless and socially excluded at the 240 Project. Recent poems appear in Litbreak, Cleaver, Prosetrics, The Ekphrastic Review and The Pomegranate London. More at simonparkerwriter.com

**

Colleague

Is that you I see, or just
a memory of me?
I hoped to be retired by now
gone from here somehow

to where the days would cease to blur
into a garbled slur
of tasks and meal breaks, greetings, sighs
I barely recognize

But leaving is impossible
instead I fade to gray
a crafty plan to disappear
a cell or two each day

My lips and nails and clothing once
were bright as yours are now
I’d give you energy I spent
I’d hoard it for you, cent by cent
if only I knew how

Julia Denton

Julia Denton grew up in Atlanta, Georgia and now lives in northern Virginia. She recently completed her Diploma in Creative Writing at Oxford University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in One Art, Anthophile, the Mid-Atlantic Review, the Alabama Literary Review, and elsewhere.

**
​
The New Girl 

Her second week and she’s still wearing colour. Shining through wool mill dusk, her lips pout like lingonberries expecting dew. I pale beside her; my skin robbed of sunlight, rubbed thin by fume and steam. I’ll give her one week until the usual smudge-yawn palette drains her.

As I work mechanically, I notice her eyes bruising, chemical dust snuffing out vision. Is she dreaming of crisp air whistling tall pines? Artists and poets? Meeting one? I see her mouth shudder as she studies my face and touches her own cheek with an inky-blue hand. Then the winch falters.

Helen Freeman

Helen Freeman loves poetry and art and living in Edinburgh. She has visited Finland for a niece's beautiful lakeside wedding, but has never worked in a factory. Her instagram page is @chemchemi.hf 

**

The Ghost of My Younger Self Has Bright Red Lips
 
The ghost of my younger self haunted me last night. Muttering, “Remember when?” and “What about that time?” Reminding me of moments I don’t want dug up. But I know that as long as I keep them buried, ghosts will use them to drag me into nighttime recriminations.

And what is it I’ve buried away? The violent husband, the lies about how the bruised cheek happened, again.

Or digging even deeper into the grave of my past, the times I drove so drunk I could hardly keep my eyes open, my 11-year-old son in the seat beside me. And deeper still, the feel of the needle pricking my arm, and then the warm rush wrapping me in cotton as the heroin entered my vein. The momentary relief from the battering of the world. 

And under it all the constant struggle to balance mothering and working and trying to be a writer. 

Last night I tried again to reassure at least the ghost who wanted to be a writer, “if only there was time.” I reminded her, yes, there was still time, your whole life lay ahead. Still time to end that marriage. Still time to be a good mother, to find love for your one and only pained and aching self. Still time to push past the barriers of fear and doubt. Still time to lay the needle down and pick up the pen.
 
Judith Yarrow

Judith Yarrow has been published in two chapbooks and various literary journals over many years, most recently in The Bluebird Word, Meniscus, Raven’s Perch, and Hedgerow. She lives in Seattle, WA. Find more of her work at jyarrow.com.

**

Second

to my dear friend Liza M. S.
 
They called me the second wife.
But in the factory’s spent air
there was no first, no second, only repeats.
She stood beside me, an earlier version
still cooling in the mould.
The press was run again
until likeness passed for order.
I began to see how a face is overwritten
how absence arrives already duplicated.
We learned not to notice fatigue:
days given, shaped, to return thinner.
I looked at her and could not tell
which of us had been first,
only that neither of us was finished.
The belt did not pause.
His gaze – a stamped instruction
calling each of us by a name cut near enough.
Our hands kept working
after meaning had left them.
And when we tried to leave, we did not leave
we only moved down the line
past him, past us,
into the same outline
still being made unnamed.

Angela Segredaki

Angela Segredaki holds a CW degree from Oxford University and loves poetry, flowers, and people. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Blue Unicorn, The Ekphrastic Review, New Lyre, Amsterdam Quarterly, Mouthful of Salt, The Adelaide Literary Magazine, Lighten Up Online, The Dawntreader, Snakeskin, The HyperTexts and elsewhere. She’s currently collaborating with the American Oxonian poet Julia Denton, on a joint poetry collection.

**

​Fantasies

I wish to invent a future, one for you, and for me,
to travel amongst the blanket facades and fall into disrepair
or, like our glass eyes left wanting to the music, create havoc
become an ocean of ideas, trained on one becoming;
to wash this world with ink and let it dry in the moon,
let everyone in on the secret, and inject passion
into their loins, to echo, to sing, to play the fool
to the delight of all that exists in the frozen faces in the mirror, and watch it
smash into fragments, shimmer as it turns us all into beauty.

Zachary Thraves

Zachary Thraves is a writer and performer. His poems have been published by Broken Sleep Books, Juste Millieu, Nitrogen House, Asylum Magazine and at Poetry Worth Hearing, as well as contributing to The Ekphrastic Review. His plays have been performed in competitions and festivals across the country; in 2023 he created a one-man fringe show exploring his experience with bi-polar, and in the same year won best actor for portraying Charles Dickens. Zac also co-hosts a podcast. He lives with his partner in East Sussex. Find him on Bluesky @28hary.

​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 Lake Keitele, by Akseli Gallen-Kallela. Deadline is July 3, 2026. 

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

The Rules

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

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

3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way.​ Scroll down to donate $5CAD (about $3.75 USD).

4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.

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

5.Include Gallen-Kallela​ 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 3, 2026.

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

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

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

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

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

Home Sweet Ohm

When Candy Land was first switched on
And neon slithered through,
The Gum Drop Mountain Passes shone
In streaks of mauve and blue;
The canes of sprouting Peppermint
Bloomed scarlet, gold, and green,
While Lollies gained a luscious tint
Of juiced-up tangerine.
The crooked House of Gingerbread
Burst out with rosy swirls,
The Ice Cream Floats lit up and spread
Like stars for boys and girls,
And all it needed was a game
With somebody to play;
And yet, since the Reactor came,
The kids have kept away.

Julia Griffin

Julia Griffin has published in some online poetry magazines including The Ekphrastic Review.

**

A Walk in a Park
​
Told to walk
in a park
for our health
and our spirits,
we entered a city
where skyscrapers grew
toward the clouds
and the sounds of the crowds
were like wind in a forest,
where we walked through a garden
abloom with cafes,
fragrant with coffee,
blazing with colours
of doorways and walkways,
where fountains in circles
gave us respite and healing,
and lifted our spirits
like a walk in a park.

Donna Reiss

Writer, editor, teacher, bookmaker, and mixed media/paper artist, Donna lives in Greenville, South Carolina, where she is a member of the Greenville Center for Creative Arts, the Guild of American Papercutters, and the Poetry Society of South Carolina. Follow her on Instagram @dreissart

**

Well-Meant​

Steve clenched his jaw, wondering how many more people would assure him, “At least she’s not suffering anymore.” It was the crummiest consolation prize in the Kingdom of Cancer. The surgeons had pared Janie away bit by bit; the treatments had left her feeling enervated and had brought on a host of new horribles. At the end, the woman who used to race him up to the top of the mountain lacked the breath to trek to the restroom unaided. Now she wasn’t suffering. Because she wasn’t doing or feeling anything anymore. 
 
He stood, enduring the conga line of condolences, because that’s what you did after you buried your wife of thirty years, and here came one of Janie’s old co-workers. This time he was offered another all-time favorite: “She’s in a better place now.” He willed his head to nod, stretched his mouth into a thin-lipped smile. A better place, as though Janie was reclining on satin sheets in a five-star hotel instead of in a satin-lined casket. 
 
They all meant well, he knew. But he wished people would just say, “I’m sorry for your loss,” maybe offer a hug or arm-squeeze, leave it at that. Not try to spin this saddest of happenings into something positive, or at least something less dreadful. He watched them trail off, cluster together, away from the dead woman’s husband, and their faces softened as they talked. They belonged to a brighter world, a world of colour. As he saw another mourner approach he retreated in his mind to a place where he didn’t have to comfort these comforters, a corner where he could shroud himself in grey.

Tracy Royce

Tracy Royce’s writing has appeared in The Mackinaw, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and ONE ART. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and a Pushcart Prize, and was selected for Best Microfiction (2026). She lives in Southern California, where she enjoys hiking and watching Richard Widmark films. Find her on Bluesky.

**

​Through a Crystal Ball, Darkly

Metropopo, the city that never sleeps! It's President's Day in the month of Reaganuary, 2127, and this city has never looked finer.  Buildings sport colourful frontages, reflecting a style popular around the fin de siècle, a quarter of a century earlier.  President Jenner III, the latest life-sovereign from the Vance-Jenner-Swift dynasty, has decreed that the continent of NorAm use this schema for festivities throughout 2127.  Their brood-sibling President Swift IV went Rococo for Eurolands, while their senior sibling, Vance Vance Jr, is trying a whole new thing in Afrikka, called Eclectico-Moderne.  No-one knows what's happening in the major block of Indo-Sino-Rossiya since they went zero-dark-ten back in 2110 after the Sekmaca pandemic. Their only visible activities are the more or less constant rockets shuttling back and forth to the ports on the ISR half of the moon, and, for those bothering to look, other rockets they send farther into space. Back in Metropopo, Dadsi Manny and their son Lil Manny have ventured onto the streets.  On the corner of Musk and Crypto they survey the tall Royal Blue Tower, symbolising the latest in virtual construction.  Both wear fashionable looks-maxxed jagged angular faces and matching unikloth outfits. Just like horses and carriages before them, all mechanical street vehicles are long gone.  Mass transit runs underground for any who need it and on special occasions like today a few pedestrians are granted permission to visit the streets. President Jenner III doesn't want the artistic merit of the civic landscape littered with private individuals' interpretations of fashion, marring the beauty of their vision, albeit one realised through machine intelligence and botserf labour.  With unlimited energy and infinite resources the mechanisms of society have almost done away with the need for private individuals anyway.  A few linger, pets almost, within the superstructure of culture and society.  The ruling class, a small elite, traded huge financial bets with each other, to the extent that counting wealth became pointless, and the regular Joe's existence was priced out entirely.  Still, a few heritage humans here and there add a little nostalgia=feel, hence the presence of Dadsi and Lil Manny in the scene.  Despite their curtailed existence they show every sign of appreciation of president Jenner III's vision.  They had better, or else.

Emily Tee

Emily Tee is a writer from the UK Midlands.  She particularly enjoys ekphrastic writing and has had work published in The Ekphrastic Review's challenges previously.  Her recent work appears in A Blot from the Blue, Poetry Scotland and The Madrid Review as well as Wild Roots, an anthology from The Nuthatch Press raising funds for the UK bird conservation charity, RSPB.

**

​The Door My Mother Left Open

Wenzel is six when he looks 
into the crystal—castles inside the stone, 
 
mountains made of light. 
 
He spends fifty years trying to build 
his way back in.
 
I am six when Goono arrives,
patient as soft summer weather, never 
 
bored, his voice something I hear and feel 
 
at the same time, a frequency the body 
knows before the mind finds words for it–
 
others say imaginary friend, spirit guide. 
 
My mother has Baa. She leaves the door
open. 
I walk through it every morning.
 
School makes Goono fainter. Not gone.
He learns to travel lighter --

moves into Benjamin, the cats, the crows 
who come each morning because I ask
them to.
 
Magic with an unexpected persistence,
 
still waiting for the next child who knows 
how to look. Now, I stand before Hablik’s
painting --
electric chaos, rainbows, stars, an
architectural drawing 

done by an artist on LSD —and underneath, 
a blueprint: the world as a six-year-old 
 
sees it, with the benefits of being grown.
 
Some things crack you open early and
spend                                                                               
              a lifetime keeping you that way.

Lynne Kemen

Lynne Kemen is the author of Shoes for Lucy (SCE Press, 2023) and More Than a Handful (Woodland Arts Editions, 2020). Her work has appeared in One Art, The Ekphrastic Review, MacQueen's Quinterly, and elsewhere. She received a 2024 Pushcart Prize nomination and serves as Editor/Interviewer for The Blue Mountain Review. She lives and writes in an 1830s farmhouse in rural Delaware County, New York, where she shares her property with a murder of crows, one of whom she has named Edgar Allen Crow.

**
​
​Returning
 
It’s not the home we leave
but the utopia we allow
while away creating space 
between our enemies and us
someone stretches and pipes
an electric buzz
over familiar patterns
aligns pots of plastic flowers
melting in the glow
hangs high rises over
saturating and exposing
stars and rainbows
 
Until everyone's the same
except for those of us
who go to the extremes
and burn sand 
into all the glass
that distorts and distracts 
us from believing
the memories we receive 
in the homes 
we can no longer see

Brendan Dawson

Brendan Dawson is an American poet and veteran. Brendan’s work is shaped by combat experience and military service with a focus on exploring the ethical weight of leadership and the liminal spaces during and after conflict. Brendan has published widely in literary journals and is currently completing an MFA in poetry. He is at work on a collection of poems centered on his departure from a career in the military and return to civilian life.

**

​Big Colourful Utopian Constructions

I hold the elevator doors ajar 
while a nattily dressed man enters. 
I press the close door button
once he reaches the back centre. 
“You know,” he says. “That’s a dummy.”
I pull my hand back, “What?” 
“It’s there to make you feel better.” 
I ride down with my mouth shut.
Our corporate grey building 
should include more placebos
I think as we descend,
and this is where my mind goes: 
Praise for a lofty atrium 
flooded with colour and light.
Praise for five massive stars 
tumbling up out of sight.
Praise for bridges of rainbows
that lead to nowhere at all.
Praise for radiant dreams
pouring in a prismatic waterfall.
Praise for Guzmania flowers
that flame like giant torches.
Praise for columns and poles
and whimsical midair porches. 
Then with a gentle thunk
the car we’re in levels and lands,
and though my vision has vanished
respair and serenity stand.

Lara Dolphin

A descendant of immigrants, Lara Dolphin lives with her family among the Allegheny Mountains of Central Pennsylvania on the ancestral land of the Susquehannock/Iroquois people. She has written three chapbooks In Search Of The Wondrous Whole, Chronicle Of Lost Moments, and At Last a Valley. She, like countless others, hopes for a world filled with greater peace. 

**

The Night the Stars Fell
                                                   
"Hublik's 'Creative Forces' were etchings portraying a voyage through an imaginary universe of crystalline structures representing the accomplishments of his career."
Timothy O. Benson et al., Expressionist Utopias, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2001; p. 210. Wikipedia
 
Drawings of the war     were ink-black & white,
leached of the colours of nature    as if the dark-cloaked
 
figure of Elektra      had convinced the artist
that paternal love     existed in temples and flying cities.
 
When  he spoke      of The Great Depression,
he told  her it was, to  him    a crystalline chasm; a mirror
        
 reflection of inner reality --    the blinding hues
of his heart and soul    when a Utopia was born on canvas.
 
Even the infra-structure of the cities     were neon-
bright;     and nestled among the colorful girders, stars
 
became the heroes of myth --     Elektra in 
the arms of  her lost father    before war was the technology
 
of heartbreak.    Time would not stop, as time
will not.     The world had known  Symbolism, German
 
Expressionism and two World Wars.   Now 
Elektra's memory of childhood    was the pain she felt
 
 when two parents -- mother and father --    reached
down to kiss a child on the playground     faces filled with love
 
though their pockets were empty.    Why did America
insist on repetition    economic fluctuation so intense not everyone
 
could survive?     & why was her ancient name au courant,
automotive and innovative, her name    captured in electric cars?    
 
When she opened      her grandfather's19th century 
wardrobe, she thought of Hublik     first a cabinet maker; how
 
a flapper girl's Utopia    was the freedom of her grand-
mother's dress, gold and silk and fringe    (the kind of fabric
 
Hublik's lady, a designer, might have used)    wrapped
up carefully in tissue.     Words of wisdom about the origin
 
 of film came to her     as her fingers touched the sheen
of the past...    wizards, mermaids, travelers, adventurers,
 
magicians.  Come and dream with me...   
                                                                      If stars
                                                                                   could fall
            from an aquamarine cloud cover --
                                                                   though skies
                                                       inevitably turn to storm -- 
                                                                   wouldn't Utopias be washed
                                                           by rivers
                                                                             blest by suns of home?
 
Laurie Newendorp
 
Honoured multiple times by The Ekphrastic Review's challenges, Laurie Newendorp is impacted by Symbolism and the Symbolists whose world prioritized dreams, the imagination, emotions and spirituality over everyday depictions of reality --  though reality be harsh, as was the horror of WWI when Rupert Booke wrote "The Soldier":
                               "If I should die, think only this of me...There shall we
                                in that rich earth a richer crust concealed/
                                Gave once her followers to love...
                                Washed by rivers, blest by suns of home."
The quote with wizards, mermaids and adventurers is from Ben Kingsley as Papa Georges in the film, Hugo Cabret.  

**

Face at the Edge

In crystal gazing Mohs saw more,
so many facets from their core,
fresh angles that revealed insight
to chasms, temples, city flights, 
for crystallography owns planes.

Geology, like meteorites,
here sight of dreams within these sites
a spatial mystery encased,
designs of architecture faced -
Utopia, More satire here?

Combined, these visions still must stand,
planned building founded, rock not sand;
a full palette, designer ware, 
metropolis, artistic flair,
Bohemian by birth, no more.

Stephen Kingsnorth

Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review.  He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.  His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com

**

Joy on Paper

Joyful joyful!
With his set of draftsman’s pens,
architect, Hablik has 
created a paper city,
two dimensional only, sadly,
full of strong straight lines,
enhanced with nested 
shapes and curves reflecting
his art deco passion.
 
It’s as though
heaven settled on his city,
stars perch on rooftops. 
The in between places are
filled with light--
no dark alleys here.
A summer garden’s 
myriad colours
meet and meld 
with blues of summer’s
varied skies. 
Painted, pointed structures 
seem ready to take off into that sky 
but even if they remain grounded
the painting propels our viewing
eyes into the colors, the forms
and shapes of his expressed joy.
Here, inside this picture
we can leave behind
earth’s darkness, 
rest in beauty, peace, joy--
all that is necessary is for us to 
“pencil” ourselves, our thoughts 
into the scene he’s set. 
Joy will be ours!

Joan Leotta

Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. Internationally published as essayist, poet, short story writer, novelist, she’s a multiple nominee for Pushcart and Best of Net. Publications include One Art, Lothlorien, The Mackinaw, Ekphrastic Review, and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. She also performs stories for youth and adult audiences. Her story programs highlight food, family, and strong women. Presenting as Louisa May Alcott she highlights the author’s development as a writer, activism, and time as Civil War Nurse. Joan’s taught storytelling and writing, for the North Carolina Poetry Society, NC Writers Network, ND Humanities, and the London Arts-Based Research Center

**

U to pi a forgotten land 
 
Think of all the wonders you might find 
when you fly into a colourful dream: 
all the colours used in the design 
from subdued pastels of lilac turquoise 
primrose yellow and jade 
all fade into the distance as if from memory; 
the mind not strong enough to hold onto them 
everything 
you puzzle over 
try to remember 
growing up 
growing older 
they’re all still there in their primary glory 
the mountains straddled by rainbows 
showing where a crock of gold must be but never was 
crossing great causeways of stepping stones 
in scarlet basalt erupting into a sky of desperate thoughts 
dispersed by waterfalls full of shifting blues and greens 
seen through eroded valleys truncated in black spurs 
softened by white mist that has taken hold of memory 
as well it might not to dwell on what you can’t find— go ahead 
find the next stars that cross the infirmament 
shooting glances in vague directions explicitly in recognition 
before stepping back and opening Schroeder’s box 
where a colourful trick might be performed in wonder 
and find today what’s inside is very much alive 
with memories before converting into the cave 
of indigo darkness unlit until a candle breaks through 
in golden spark-like stars that flame-on-orange-sunflower-white 
heat not to be touched nor regressed back to 
“don’t touch it will burn” instructions; 
in this colourful find, utopia doesn’t need reminding 
all light and dark are kind upon the eye 
retrieving all the commotion of the fun of the fair 
all the circus tent emotion and flair 
seen from so deep in memory that they are lost 
while others hope that old yellow bricks 
and the red swoosh on shoes might lead 
the feet not to ‘no place’ but to where pi equates 
to going a full circle and a return to home— 
forgotten in all but technicolour dreams

Peter R Longden​
​
Peter R Longden grew up in Rotherham, South Yorkshire before moving to Coventry in 1981 for a long career working with young people. Now retired, poetry is a significant part of his life, both writing and reading. He is still looking to publish a first chapbook, having had individual poems published by 9th O’Bheal Five Words Competition (2022); two poems published by The Ekphrastic Review in 2024 and April 2026; and two ekphrastic poems in the Wee Sparrow Poetry Press Newsletters in 2024 and 2025. Other poems have been published in local anthologies. Writing poetry began over 25 years ago, recording how to see the world and what makes it the way it is. Peter is married to Sally with two grown-up boys (and a two-year-old granddaughter).

**

The Blinding Lights Do Blind So

you see the colourful lights
the busyness
the sounds of people crammed together
they’re happy they say
going about their day to day
the buildings tall
the lined lanes leading with purpose
one must assume
the bridges spanning necessity to
extravagance
but you don’t see what lies beneath
the neon lights
the daily lives
the commerce and construction
down there somewhere rests a
foundation laid long before
flat and solid and gray and
made of sturdy stuff and the
blood and bones of those who
built it so this space could exist
the ones who made the spires and
steeples and streets and
everything enjoyed by the
inhabitants of this
utopian infrastructure
they’re happy they say
but what else lies beneath the
facade of glowing glass and
phosphorescent fabrication
things unseen because
though necessary they might
detract from the dazzling display
and no one wants to see that

Joe Coy

Joe Coy (he/him) has always been fascinated by how a few words and a few lines can say so much. His poems explore themes of nature, spirituality, social and political issues, hope, love, and connection and have been selected for publication in Anomaly, Altar Literary, Epistemic Literary, and anthologies by Wandering Words and Gorgon's Gaze Press.

**

Equality

The agents of equilibrium are no longer passive metaphors-
colors beneath this mighty architecture seek governance,
wishing the eye meets the surface in ways that transform. 
Neural activation creates a balance between life and death.

Reaction-Diffusion systems operate at the highest level.
They explain everything-
don't you know? 

Emergent structures of justice,
plain as day, plain as sight:
a flat surface becomes…
phase space

Art and ethics co-evolve,
nonlinearity loops,
autopoiesis breathes-
the boundary holds.

Suspended,
complete.

MWPiercy

Michael W. Piercy: "At the intersection of Art, Poetry and Contradiction, you will find my work, you will find me. Observing memories and the present moment , thinking with an eye that shadows the natural world. Philosophy, Theology, and Science are core of my writing - I have found that I am a synthesizer. Managing ideas which do not always cohere. A manipulator of ideas."

**

Spinning a Vision
 
Frenzied orange lines zigzag into the sky 
clashing with pink, royal blue-- 
colors rarely set side by side.
The buildings surprise me,
Their lines bent, flowing 
forming rainbow arches which soften the field,
shifting as the morning and late afternoon light 
burns and fades.
 
What would a life inside these walls contain?
Notes breathe from a saxophone long after sunset.
A novelist charts undiscovered lands.
A young mother shows her child new forms,
opening paths for a growing mind.
A grandmother, not quite ready to sit and rock
with a cup of tea,
pulls her oils out of storage--
smearing the burnt orange next to the royal blue
and muddying the green just a touch
To make us think: now why did she do that?
 
Wenzel Hablik you spun these magical castles
and mountains from a childhood crystal,
trying to reproduce those images throughout your life.
You hoped that painted surfaces would offer comfort,
A place of healing and peace 
for those emerging from a world plunged into a war,
You offered a futuristic vision,
throbbing with joyful colours,
if only people were brave enough
to walk toward this vision, 
and enter.

Celeste DeSario

Celeste DeSario taught English at Suffolk County Community College in Brentwood, NY for 37 years. Celeste received teaching honours from SUNY and the University of Texas, and now focuses on writing her own poetry and  fiction. Her recent poetry appears in The New Verse News, The Changing Times, The SportsScribe Literary Magazine, and The Ekphrastic Review.

**

​Observing the World Through the Fantastical

Those in crystal palaces
view the world in kaleidoscopic detail,
each brightly tinctured prism,
its pallor playful and bright,
highlights an ideal existence
devoid of deadly conflict.
The artist begs us to focus
on aesthetic optimism,
he imagines his own slice of utopia
as a star and rainbow paradise.
Feast your eyes on reflective beauty
and feel the peace within you unfold.

Elaine Sorrentino

Elaine Sorrentino, author of Belly Dancing in a Brown Sweatsuit (Kelsay Books, 2025) has been published in journals such asQuartet Journal, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Gyroscope Review,Sparks of Calliope, Sheila-Na-Gig, Poetry Porch, Ekphrastic Review, and Haikuniverse. She is facilitator of the Duxbury Poetry Circle in Duxbury, MA.

**

After Utopian Buildings, by Wenzel Hablik 

Sunlight beyond bright
it must 
to show radiance 

of such colour bound
to future
dreams of ideal

where colours replace
drab concrete
and shout flowers

joy within angles
curve skyward
leading us toward

the love in our hearts
peaceful creation 
of where we'll dwell

in harmony within
and without
a dream unrealized.

Daniel Warren Brown

Daniel Warren Brown is a retired special education teacher who began writing poetry as a senior. At age 72 he published his first collection FAMILY PORTRAITS IN VERSE and Other Illustrated Poems through Epigraph Books, Rhinebeck, NY  Daniel has been published in various journals and anthologies, most recently Jerry Jazz Musician,  Chronogram Magazine and KINDS OF COOL an anthology of jazz poetry.. He has hosted a youtube channel POETRY FROM SHOOKS POND and was included in Arts Mid-Hudson's  Poets Respond To Art in 2022-23. Daniel writes each day about music, art and whatever else captures his imagination. ​

​**

The Shift

It’s a whole other world out here.  Colours I have never seen.  Bioluminescence.  Or perhaps my vision has changed.  For I have changed.  Something intrinsic happened when I left Earth’s atmosphere.  Some inner shift of matter, some casting off of skin.  
 
Everything here is dizzying motion.  I search for the soul in things and instead I’m thrown back on mine.  Only to question my here-and-nowness.  But I am real, I was borne of Earth, I am just elsewhere.  Where elsewhere is remains unclear.  My chaperone has not told me.
 
Or guide, or whatever he is.  I don’t know what to call him.  He is an agent of some kind.  Humanoid.  But not human.  Another race.  Tall, albino-fair, with skin that’s sparkling or scaly.  I haven’t seen him in full light yet, or a light I can call earthly.
 
I almost lose my footing in this realm.  The walls keep shifting, as does the ground beneath me.  My sense of balance is dashed.  As if I have sea legs.  Sea of tranquillity legs.  Except I’m not tranquil.  Neither am I agitated.  If I had to give it a name, it would be disassociated.
 
For what may have been a long time – time? what even was that here?  there was only the moment, the assault of the senses – I stand before a spinning wheel of rainbow persuasion as four-dimensional stars pop and gather.  I come to realise they are entities of their own with a consciousness that is different to mine.  They buzz around my head as if examining me and make a high-pitched whining as they zip to and fro. 
 
My, God, the spectacle of this place!  It is an endless morphing.  My mind is adrift with the strangeness.  I am grappling both with my new vision and sights I have never seen.  It is like being stuck in some unearthly arcade, one which offers a promise of joy but is really just an elaborate trompe l’oeil.
 
There’s that word again – unearthly.  How can I not compare everything to my Mother?  And this place is like being utterly present within a psychedelic trip of multiplicitous dimensions that my brain is trying to fathom.  As if I am more liquid than solid and close to fainting –
 
My chaperone catches me.  I stare up into the deepest eyes I have ever seen.  No whites, just a blue ocean.  Like portals.  I am lost all over again.  He seems to know how I’m feeling, it is something his race can do.  He averts his gaze.
 
You’ll get used to it, he telepaths.  It’s a lot to take in, I understand.
 
When do I go back to Earth? I ask.  I don’t like it here.
 
He looks at me with a small, sad smile and says nothing.  Which answers my question.
 
But why?  I am bewildered.  Caught in the bewilderness of a terrifying, new reality.  
 
Earth is no longer the home you once knew, he tells me.  Because he knows I only want the truth.
 
I feel the grief of this but at a distance, as if I am examining the thought in mid-air.  I know I’ll feel the tearing within later, and I would rather delay that.  For my heart will know it is broken.  Wherever I am, I will always be Earth Child.  Estranged.  
 
For Earth had been besieged as I left, from all sides.  War had broken out, like nothing humanity had ever known.  And as I was torn from the atmosphere of my Mother in the ship that had materialised out of nowhere in the smoke-thick night, I could see the fire, the endless fire, so much fire.  New races had arrived, non-human, and they meant us harm, had wreaked a savage havoc.  But there were others too who had intervened, who looked like the man-creature I was with, and they had stolen us away.  Those who hadn’t perished.  And it had been a cacophony of screams and explosions, and a deafening unmaking of all that was whole and good.  
 
I could not think of Earth as a dead planet, I could not.  It could not be true.
 
I switch off the memory and file it away.  I can’t deal with it right now.  Maybe this is all a dream.  Maybe I could ask my guide to help me believe this is all a dream and that I will one day return to Earth.  My heart needed the lie, if only for a while.
 
He seems to sense my disorder for he makes a valiant attempt to distract me.  
 
Let me show you the Solaris Dynamo, he telepaths.  I think you’ll like it.  
 
I have no idea what he means but I think he means well.  And then I am filled with a sudden longing for the ocean.  Oh, Earth.
 
Is there an aquarium? I ask.  He smiles and says nothing.  
 
Kindly, or maybe it’s just the way he is programmed, he waits until I am ready before we move on.  For I am not moving in a way that makes sense, my feet are not on the ground.  Rather, I am hovering and able to move by the power of thought alone.  
 
Tell me something true, I say, as we move through the new realm.  Tell me something real and good.  
 
He turns to me and is silent for a time.  

You are real and good, he says.  And you are safe with me.

Nina Nazir

​Nina Nazir (she/her) is a neurodivergent British Pakistani poet, writer and fine artist based in Birmingham, UK.  She has been widely published online and in print.  You can usually find her surrounded by books, making art or putting one word in front of the other.  You can also find her on Instagram: @nina.s.nazir or www.ninasnazir.substack.com where she regularly shares poetry, art and book reviews.

**

​If Fritz Lang Had Consulted Wenzel Hablik

At the Cafe Arco, they’d remark on the variegated tones of wet cobblestone. The pink chicken served on Vltava river cruises. The rainbow over Charles Bridge connecting Old Town with Mala Strana. The golem, ready to rise from the Altneu Synagogue, hands raised to wreak havoc if summoned. The spiked spires of Town Hall and St. Vitus. The astronomical clock in Old Town Square. Kafka’s motorbike navigating the circumference of his own rotating metallic head in New Town. Lang would lament the oppression of his workers. Hablik would offer them balance in his new utopia. Together with writer Karel Čapek’s creation of the word robot, they could construct this utopia together. Lang would insist on Metropolis in colour.

Barbara Krasner

Film buff Barbara Krasner majored in German language and literature. She spent a month in Prague on a fiction fellowship in 2011 and visited all of Kafka's haunts while studying the Czech language. She wrote about her Czech experiences in Pounding Cobblestone (Kelsay Books, 2018). Visit her website at www.barbarakrasner.com.

**

​What I Realize Now  
  
When I was eighteen, I took a few hits of LSD
to boost my high on hash oil, beer, and pot, 
but looking now at Hablik’s psychedelic worlds,
I realize no drug trip holds half the wonderment 
of an artist’s unleashed imagination. 
Take, for instance, the big colourful stars 
in his painting, Utopian Buildings,
that float around rainbows of a dozen hues,
and the kaleidoscopic mazes that lead 
to mind-altering avenues with no exits; 
or the flowers with eyes and pointy crowns
on oblong tables that form intoxicating patterns 
on unpopulated streets. Hallucinogenic striata 
to the left and right of arches mix with crystalline 
tunnels that lead to fading walls or to a mauve sky,
like what the visionary saw above the peaks
on his solitary treks up the slopes of the Alps. 
And about that drug trip of mine --
the way it ended: two guys saw me swinging 
around a city street sign pole and offered help. 
They took me to a rehab centre, and I’ve stayed 
clean and sober for forty-nine years.

Gregory E. Lucas

Gregory E. Lucas writes fiction and poetry. His short stories and poems have appeared in Sparks of Calliope. Rue Scribe, Blueline, and elsewhere. He lives on Hilton Head Island, in South Carolina. Follow him on X.com @GregoryELucas.

**

​where bad cities go to die, that’s where I’ll be

the rainbow will take you by the hand
on that day when the buildings will reveal their colours
 
you will wake up, and the sun will be a disco ball
your language will explode into seventeen cases,
dative and inessive giggling in delight
technicolor falcons will swallow those new words 
 
today you see the clammy rain of suffocating Wednesday afternoons in August
today you stir too much sugar into your espresso, then let it go cold
today your pants stick to a brown plastic chair and you feel embarrassed when getting up
today concrete is grey, the graffiti half washed out, the train seats cracked and tired
 
but you dreamed
 
the rainbow will take you by the hand
on that day when the buildings will reveal their colours
 
and you still hope

Eva Lantsoght

Eva Lantsoght is a multilingual poet from Belgium, who lives in the Netherlands and Ecuador. Her work has appeared in Katern, Museum de Mindere, De Optimist, Spillwords, Hesiodos Flow Fest, has been awarded with the Soetendaele poetry prize and Harelbeke poetry prize, and is forthcoming in Eunoia Review.

**

​The Commission 

“I expect you to paint a magnificent picture of my utopian city,” the client said to me. 

I didn’t respond. No matter how many times I encountered a self-important client, I struggled to be polite. So, where possible, I spoke little.
 
“Well?” the client said. “You paint pictures of buildings, which are then hung in their lobbies, don’t you? I’m told such art is popular. Are you hesitating to do what I ask because I want a painting of not just one building but the entirety of the wonderful city I’ve constructed?”
 
I took a deep breath and said, “I accept the commission.” And when the client turned and strode away, I muttered, “Let us hope we never have to meet again.”
 
Afterwards, on the way to the airport and my flight home, I asked the taxi driver to stop. I intended to return soon with my paraphernalia of brushes, oil paints, easel and canvas; first, though, I wanted to look again at this city that had appeared so quickly in what had been a wilderness. As I stared, I found it impossible to distinguish between the living accommodation, offices and factories. Surely the client is delusional, I reflected, when he describes this place as utopian?
 
That word–utopian– stayed with me. Once back in my studio, I consulted my books on art and found a reproduction of Ambrosius Holbein’s 1516 depiction of Thomas More’s Utopia. In this woodcut of an imaginary, flawless island, I could see no people other than a sailor on a ship.
 
This is intriguing, I thought. Is the sailor approaching the apparently deserted island and viewing it with apprehension? If so, is Holbein suggesting that no one can, or should, live in a so-called utopia?
 
At this precise moment, my phone pinged. I had a message from the client’s executive assistant: Ensure that in your painting of our city you have people gazing at the buildings in wonder.
 
That would certainly be different to Holbein, I thought and continued to leaf through my books. Before long, I came across Wenzel Hablik’s 1922 vision of utopian constructions. For several hours, I studied and admired the colours and shapes. Then I reflected upon my career and body of work.
 
Some months later, I met the client’s executive assistant in the lobby of the tallest building in the new city.
 
“You took your time,” the executive assistant said. “My boss likes things done quickly. So, where’s the painting?”
 
I gestured towards a bubble-wrapped canvas propped against a wall.
 
“Do I have to arrange for it to be hung?” the executive assistant said.
 
“Not my job.”
 
The executive assistant sighed. “Okay, you can go. Send me your invoice.”
 
I never received payment for the painting. Between them, Holbein and Hablik had inspired me to use colours and forms that bore no relation to the client’s utopian city. I also omitted people.
 
No further corporate commissions have ever come my way. I don’t miss them. Instead, my imagination guides me.

K. J. Watson

K. J. Watson’s stories and poems have appeared on the radio; in comics, magazines and anthologies; and online.

**

Metamorphoses
 
It takes only a century
for a shy lean utopia
to turn into a loud obese dystopia.
A mere geometric nightmare
is mirrored as skyscrapers en masse
(whatever that means)
dominating even fleeting rainbows.
Right-full-of-themselves angles
cut myriads of oval apples in accord
multiplying the mythical discord.
Madly leaping army of lines
cris-cross the foreground in an instance
while crazy colors compete
to better blindfold the perspective –
indeed –
what is mutating real
is a bedazzled world
sans human horizon
sans divine heaven –
you can neither fly
not shut the missing sky
to the advancing
globally dancing
skeletal utopia
turning corpulent dystopia.
 
Ekaterina Dukas
 
Ekaterina Dimitrova writes poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning. Her poems are often honoured by The Ekphrastic Review and its challenges. Her collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europa Edizioni, 2021.

**

Explosion of Colours 
 
This is what I feel
Colorful words that explode
While I am writing

Jean Bourque. 

Jean lives in Montreal. For him, writing is like painting.

​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 Factory Workers on the Way to Work, by Helene Schjerfbeck ​. Deadline is June 19, 2026. 

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

The Rules

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

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

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4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.

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

5.Include Schjerfbeck Challenge in the subject line.

6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. 

7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 

8. Deadline is midnight EST, June 19, 2026.

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

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

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

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

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